"The Jewish people as a whole will be its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races...and by the establishment of a world republic in which everywhere the Jews will exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this New World Order the Children of Israel...will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition..." (Karl Marx in a letter to Baruch Levy, quoted in Review de Paris, June 1, 1928, p. 574)

Sunday, 10 December 2006

911 Timeline Pre-2001

• February 27, 1933 - The German parliament's Reichstag building is set ablaze allegedly by a "crazed" young Dutch Communist in which afterwards the Nazis would claimed the fire was part of a "Communist conspiracy" to seize power in Germany and the Nazis would use the incident as their launching pad to dissolve civil liberties, ban opposition political parties, and create a dictatorship in order to "resist" a Communist takeover when evidence later pointed that the fire was really perpetrated by leaders in the Nazi Party.

"The Reichstag fire, a pivotal event in the establishment of Nazi Germany, began at 9:14 PM on the night of February 27, 1933, when a Berlin fire station received an alarm that the Reichstag building, assembly location of the German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire seemed to have been started in several places, and by the time the police and firemen arrived a huge explosion had set the main Chamber of Deputies in flames. Looking for clues, the police quickly found Marinus van der Lubbe, naked, cowering behind the building. Van der Lubbe was a Dutch insurrectionary council communist and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany.

Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring arrived soon after, and, when they were shown van der Lubbe, Göring immediately declared the fire was set by the Communists and had the party leaders arrested. Hitler took advantage of the situation to declare a state of emergency and encouraged aging president Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of the human rights provisions of the 1919 Weimar Republic constitution.

...the Nazis had run on a platform of hysterical anti-communism, insisting that Germany was on the verge of a Communist revolution, and that the only way to stop the revolution was to pass the Enabling Act. Hitler's platform in the campaign comprised little more than demands that voters increase the Nazi share of seats so that the Enabling Act could be passed. In order to decrease the number of opposition members who could vote against the Enabling Act, Hitler had planned to ban the KPD, which at the time held 17% of the parliament's seats, after the elections and before the new Reichstag convened. The Reichstag Fire allowed Hitler to accelerate the banning of the Communist Party and was used to confirm Nazi claims of a pending Communist revolution. The Nazis argued the Reichstag fire was meant to serve as a signal to launch the revolution, and warned the German public about the grisly fate they would suffer under Communist rule.

The Nazis alleged that Van der Lubbe was part of the Communist conspiracy to burn down the Reichstag and seize power, while the Communists alleged that Van der Lubbe was part of the Nazi conspiracy to blame the crime on them.

The Leipzig Trial was widely publicized and was broadcast on the radio. It was expected the court would find the Communists guilty on all counts and approve the repression and terror exercised by the Nazis against all opposition forces in the country. It was clear the first time Georgi Dimitrov spoke that would not happen. Dimitrov had given up his right to a court appointed lawyer and defended himself successfully. He proved his innocence and the innocence of his Communist comrades and was set free. In addition, he presented evidence that the organizers of the fire were senior members of the Nazi Party.

Hitler was furious with the outcome of this trial. He decreed that henceforth treason – among many other offenses – would only be tried by a newly established Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) which later became infamous for the enormous number of death sentences it handed down while led by Roland Freisler.

Historians generally agree that van der Lubbe was involved in the Reichstag fire. The extent of the damage, however, has led to considerable debate over whether he acted alone. Considering the speed with which the fire engulfed the building, van der Lubbe's reputation as a mentally disturbed arsonist hungry for fame, and cryptic comments by leading Nazi officials, it is generally believed the Nazi hierarchy was involved in order to reap political gain — and it obviously did.

At Nuremberg, General Franz Halder stated in an affadavit that Göring had joked about setting the fire." - Wikipedia

"The Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag on March 23, 1933. It was the second major step after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the Nazis legally established Nazi Germany by providing the government with legislative powers, effectively handing dictatorial powers to then Chancellor Adolf Hitler." - Wikipedia

"The Pentagon—a building, institution, and symbol—was conceived at the request of Brigadier General Brehon B. Sommervell, Chief of the Construction Division of the Office of the Quartermaster General, on a weekend in mid-July 1941. The purpose was to provide a temporary solution to the War Department’s critical shortage of space. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on September 11, 1941. The building was dedicated on January 15, 1943, nearly 16 months to the day after the groundbreaking." - Defense Link

• October 25, 1944 - The first use of airplanes in suicide attacks are preformed by the Japanese "Kamikaze's".

"By extension, during World War II the word came to be used for desperate suicide attacks, particularly by aircraft assigned to destroy US and Allied ships by flying directly into them. Japan had lost any pretext of having competitive fighters by 1944, and were hardly able to service them, so expending them as bombs was suggested by Admiral Takijiro Onishi in October 1944. The first kamikaze strike came on October 25, 1944, off the Philippine island of Leyte." - Wikipedia

(See also: February 22, 1974 - Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the White House)

• July 28, 1945 - The only previous time a plane has crashed into a U.S. skyscraper was a military plane during the night through heavy fog.

"The last time a plane crashed into a New York City skyscraper was July 28, 1945. A U.S. bomber flying through thick fog at about 200 mph crashed into the Empire State Building, one of the most recognized structures in the world." - ABC (09/11/01)

• 1954 - Operation Suzannah, known as the "Lavon Affair," was a covert operation by the Mossad to bomb U.S. installations in Egypt and blame Arabs for it to harm Egyptian-American relations.

"The aim of the Israeli Operation Suzannah was to bomb United States installations in Egypt, such as cinemas, and blame Arabs, hoping it would harm Egyptian-American ties. It is also known as the Lavon affair or Faulty Business (esek bish), after the Israeli defence minister who was forced to resign because of the incident, then deeply shocked the Israeli political system by asking to review his case.

The operation was carried out by an Israeli military intelligence unit ("Unit 131" [1]) in 1954, but supposedly not backed by civilian Israeli leadership of that time. The operation, which was commenced in an amateurish fashion, led to the almost immediate identification and capture of the Mossad agents before any lives were taken.

Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring. Some of the spies were from Israel, while others were recruited from the local Jewish population in Egypt.

The capture of the agents caused outrage among Egyptian authorities. However, there was also great concern among the Israeli public and lead to Israel's first major political scandal." - Wikipedia

(See also: March 13, 1962 - America's top military leaders drafted "Operation Northwoods" which were secret plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba; 9/11 - The most devastating and unprecedented terrorist attack in history happens against the United States of America allegedly committed by 19 radical Arab Muslims; 9/11 - A New Jersey homemaker witnesses a group of young men kneeling on a white van.)

• 1962 to 1970 - U.S. military secretly tests WMD's on over 5,800 soldiers, many of whom were unwitting guinea pigs.

"The Defense Department released the final findings of an investigation into Project 112 and Project SHAD, which were conducted from 1962 to 1973 to test the combat capabilities of biological and chemical agents and ways to protect U.S. troops from such attacks.

Monday's report raised the number of U.S. troops identified as having been present for one or more of the tests to 5,842, many of whom were not informed of their participation.

CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales first reported in May 2000 on the more than 100 secret biological warfare tests conducted at sea, including two — code-named "Autumn Gold" and "Copper Head" — more than 1,000 U.S. sailors were sprayed with materials thought to be harmless.

Some of the tests Project 112 tests, which had names like Flower Drum or Fearless Johnny, involved sarin or VX nerve gas. At least one used a simulant that was thought to be harmless but is now considered hazardous." - CBS/AP (07/01/03)

(See also: July 1, 2003 - U.S. military releases their final findings into the testing of WMD's on thousands of unsuspecting soldiers; January 16, 2004 - The U.S. military is continuing to withhold documents over Cold War WMD tests it conducted on over 5,800 soldiers)

• March 13, 1962 - America's top military leaders, who were staunchly right-wing, drafted "Operation Northwoods" which were secret plans to kill innocent people, commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, hijack airplanes, plant evidence, among other things, and blame it on Cubans to create public indignation and support for a war against Cuba.

Friendly Fire; Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba

"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower. The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military — not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion.

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job.

The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.

There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained." - ABC (05/01/01)

(See also: 1954 - Operation Suzannah, known as the "Lavon Affair", was a covert operation by the Mossad to bomb U.S. installations in Egypt and blame Arabs for it to harm Egyptian-American relations; August 4, 1964 - US agency concludes the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was used to escalate the Vietnam war, never happened; 9/11 - The most devastating and unprecedented terrorist attack in history happens against the United States of America allegedly committed by 19 radical Arab Muslims)

• May 22, 1962 - Continental Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 707, becomes the first known commercial airliner to be sabotaged when a bomb explodes onboard in mid-flight killing 45 people aboard.

"A bomb exploded aboard this Continental Boeing 707, killing all 45 people aboard. This was the first known case of sabotage aboard a commercial jet airliner. The bomb was believed to have been carried aboard by a passenger in a suicide-for-insurance plot." - Plane Crash Info

"The aircraft crashed due to a bomb explosion at 39,000 feet. This was the first known bombing of a commercial jet airliner. Date: 22 May 1962; Airline: Continental Airlines; Flight No.: 11; Aircraft: B707-124; Location: Unionville, Missouri; Fatalities: 45:45" - AirDisaster.Com

• 1963 - The Milgram experiment was an "obedience to authority" psychological experiment (which was trying to find out if millions of accomplices in the holocaust were merely following orders) demonstrated that the majority of participants in the study were willing to inflict harm to another person in the study at the orders of the authority figure (experimenter), especially if the authority figure demeaned the participant thought to be receiving pain in front of the participant who thought they were really inflicted pain to them.

"The Milgram experiment was a famous scientific experiment of social psychology. The experiment was first described by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in an article titled Behavioral Study of Obedience published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963, and later discussed at book length in his 1974 Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. It was intended to measure the willingness of a participant to obey an authority who instructs the participant to do something that may conflict with the participant's personal conscience.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Before the experiment was conducted Milgram polled fellow psychologists as to what the results would be. They unanimously believed that only a few sadists would be prepared to give the maximum voltage.

The experimenter (E) persuades the participant (S) to give what the participant believes are painful electric shocks to another participant (A), who is actually an actor. Many participants continued to give shocks despite pleas for mercy from the actor.

In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (27 out of 40) of experimental participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were quite uncomfortable in doing so; everyone paused at some point and questioned the experiment, some even saying they would return the cheque for the money they were paid. No participant steadfastly refused to give further shocks before the 300-volt level. Variants of the experiment were later performed by Milgram himself and other psychologists around the world with similar results.

Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the experiment (done at various times since, in the US and elsewhere). He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, between 61% and 66%, regardless of time or location. - Wikipedia

"Milgram’s obedience to authority experiment countered the participant’s moral beliefs against the demands of authority. Participants were told that the study would look at the relationship of punishment in learning, and that one person would be the teacher, and the other would be the learner (a confederate), and that these roles would be determined by a random drawing. The learner was then strapped into a chair, and electrodes are attached to their arm. It was explained to both the teacher and the learner that the electrodes were attached to an electric shock generator, and that shocks would serve as punishment for incorrect answers. The experimenter then states that the shocks will be painful, but that they will not cause any permanent tissue damage, while in reality no shocks would actually be received. The teacher and learner are then divided into separate rooms.

Milgram found that 65% of participants would render shock levels of 450 volts, and that these were everyday normal people. These interviews confirmed that everyday normal people can cause pain and suffering to another person, under the right set of circumstances. Milgram also found the tendency of the teacher to devalue the learner, by saying such phrases as, “he is so dumb he deserves to get shocked,” which helped to interally justify the teachers behavior of continuing to administer the shocks." - Northern Illinois University

"United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 PM Central time. He was on a campaign and support trip through the Southern United States in anticipation of the upcoming 1964 presidential election. Kennedy was fatally wounded by multiple gunshot wounds while riding in an open-top automobile. Texas Governor John B Connally was also severely injured in the same assassination attempt. Later that afternoon, U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States aboard Air Force One.

At 12:30 PM, with the presidential limo traveling an average of 11.2 miles per hour through the plaza, at least two shots are known to have struck the occupants of the car. The Warren commission believed three were fired, all by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Depository. Two of them hit, one missed the car and its occupants. The first bullet that hit, called the 'magic bullet' by critics of the Warren report, was believed to have struck Kennedy in the back to exit at his throat, then to bounce to hit Governor Connally in the back and wrist. The subsequent bullet that hit, the shot fatal to Kennedy, struck him in the back of the head. From the evidence it is unclear whether it was the first, second, or third shot that missed.

Immediately after the shots were fired and the gravity of the situation became clear to the limo driver and the Secret Service, the limo sped off out of Dealey Plaza on its way to Parkland Hospital." - Wikipedia

(See also: June 5, 1968 - JFK's younger brother Robert is assassinated; June 23, 1972 - Nixon uses the expression "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" in a recorded White House meeting with Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman which is revealed later that Nixon's references to the Bay of Pigs was code for the Kennedy assassination; March 6, 1975 - The Abraham Zapruder film is first shown on TV; 1976 - James R. Bath, a friend of George W. Bush from the Texas Air National Guard, opens an aircraft brokerage firm in which one of his investors is Gov. John Connally; March 29, 1979 - House Select Committee on Assassinations JFK assassination report)

• November 22, 1963 - An hour after JFK's shooting, police arrest 24 yr. old Lee Harvey Oswald who vehemently denies shooting the President and says he's just a "patsy."

"News of the president's shooting had Dallas residents on high alert, and several people noticed a suspicious man duck into a doorway eight blocks from the shooting scene as cop cars passed.One such witness was Johnny Brewer, a shoe store manager, who saw the man slip into the Texas Theater.

More than a dozen officers converged on the theater. They ordered the house lights turned up, and Brewer pointed out the suspicious character. As cops moved in, the man brandished his pistol but was subdued before firing a shot, although some officers said they heard the "click" of a misfire.

The suspect was 24 years old, 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald.A misfit Marine Corps vet, the native of New Orleans had been hired as a $1.25-an-hour order-filler at the Texas School Book Depository six weeks earlier.

En route to the police station, Oswald asked over and over, "Why am I being arrested?"Oswald was taken to the Dallas Police and Courts Building downtown.

At 7:10 that evening, a justice of the peace visited to arraign Oswald on charges that he killed Patrolman Tippit. Six hours later, at 1:30 a.m. November 23, he was arraigned by the same justice in the murder of Kennedy.

Oswald was questioned at Dallas police headquarters for some 12 cumulative hours over the two days following his arrest. Capt. J.W. Fritz of the Dallas police homicide bureau conducted most of the interrogation.

FBI and Secret Service agents often were present and sometimes asked questions of Oswald.The Warren Commission said, "Throughout this interrogation he denied that he had anything to do either with the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit." - Crime Library

"Mr Oswald was arrested about an hour after the assassination of John F Kennedy, carried out as the President's motorcade passed through the Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

He was initially taken into custody for the murder of a policeman, JD Tippit, who appears to have recognised him and approached him just 45 minutes after the killing of the President.Soon after, Mr Oswald was also charged with the President's assassination.

He strongly denied that he carried out the assassination, saying to reporters, "I'm just a patsy." - BBC, On This Day

• November 24, 1963 - Two days after Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest, Jack Ruby (who had many friends in the Dallas police department, links to organized crime, and owed the government $45,000) shoots and kills Oswald live on national TV when an estimated 75 cops were assembled waiting for Oswald's transfer and would later make a statement to reports that the people who had "so much to gain" and put him in the "position I'm in," are in very high positions and will never let the true facts come out.

"Jack Ruby: Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts, of what occurred, my motives. The people had, that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.

"At about 11 a.m. Sunday, November 24, Oswald was to be transferred from the Police and Courts Building to the Dallas County Jail—standard procedure once a crime suspect had been charged with a felony.

Curry decided to make the move of Oswald a media event by staging a photo opportunity in the basement of police headquarters.

He indicated to reporters that the transfer would happen after 10 a.m. Sunday, November 24.After the basement was secure, cops allowed journalists to re-enter.

By 11:20 a.m., an estimated 50 newsmen and 75 cops were assembled waiting for Oswald.On live national television, Oswald walked through the doors surrounded by lawmen. After he had walked perhaps 10 feet, a stout man stepped between newsman at the edge of the crowd. He extended his right hand, which gripped a Colt .38-caliber revolver, and fired "a single fatal bullet into Oswald's abdomen," as the Warren Commission report put it.

The man was soon identified as Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner who had many friends in the city's police department.

He told the Warren Commission he was overwhelmed by "the emotional feeling...that someone owed this debt to our beloved President to save her the ordeal of coming back. I don't know why that came through my mind." Ruby swore he was not part of a conspiracy to silence Oswald.Ruby was charged with murder and stood trial in February and March 1964. His attorney, Melvin Belli, argued for an insanity verdict, but the jury convicted Ruby and condemned him to die.

He was drafted into the Army Air Forces in 1943 and spent three uneventful years at military bases in the south.

The Warren Commission reported, "Ruby's police friendships were far more widespread than those of the average citizen."

The government also hounded Ruby for delinquent taxes, including about $5,000 in income tax and $40,000 in federal excise taxes he had neglected to charge patrons because he claimed his establishments were restaurants, not cabarets.

As a strip club owner, Ruby became acquainted with many of the more unsavory individuals of the Dallas underworld.

The Warren Commission report said that while he was "friendly with numerous underworld figures," "evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime. "Ruby probably was allowed to stay in business by paying off the Dallas mob, then led by Joseph Civello. Among his closest friends was Civello's No. 2 lieutenant, and Ruby also was tight with three brothers who led another Dallas Mafia unit." - Crime Library

• August 4, 1964 - Based on intercepted communications, U.S. military intelligence claims there has been a second attack on the USS Maddox by Vietnamese naval ships (the "Gulf of Tonkin incident") which propels an outraged U.S. Congress to overwhelmingly pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution three days later that enables President Lyndon Johnson to employ military force in Vietnam as he saw fit and becomes the crucial turning point in escalating the war. However after 40 years later, analysis from the U.S.'s own intelligence agency concluded that this second attack on the Maddox never actually took place.

Doubts cast on Vietnam War buildup

"A just-released spy-agency analysis contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, which casts further doubt on the main rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War.

Much as faulty U.S. intelligence preceded the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of intercepted communications 40 years earlier is blamed in a National Security Agency paper released Thursday for giving President Lyndon B. Johnson carte blanche to wage war in Vietnam.

The agency put out more than 140 long-secret documents in response to requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea on August 4, 1964, and has been disputed since.

Among the documents is an article written by one of the agency's historians for its classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly, which declared that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."

Claims that North Vietnamese boats attacked two warships that August 4, just two days after an initial assault on one of the ships, rallied Congress behind Johnson's buildup of the war. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which passed three days later, empowered Johnson to take "all necessary steps" in the region and opened the way for large-scale commitment of U.S. forces.

"In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August," Hanyok wrote.

The Maddox had come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats August 2 and took only superficial damage." - CNN (12/01/05) [Cached]

Summary of the Tonkin Gulf Crisis of August 1964

"A clash between naval forces of the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in August 1964 marked a significant turning point in the Cold War struggle for Southeast Asia.

In early August of 1964, destroyer USS Maddox (DD 731), under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, USN, steamed along the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin gathering various types of intelligence.

On the afternoon of 2 August, the Communists dispatched three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats against Maddox. Torpedoes launched from the P-4s missed their mark. Only one round from enemy deck guns hit the destroyer; it lodged in the ship's superstructure.

On the night of 4 August, the warships reported making contact and then being attacked by several fast craft far out to sea. Officers in the naval chain of command and U.S. leaders in Washington were persuaded by interpretation of special intelligence and reports from the ships that North Vietnamese naval forces had attacked the two destroyers. More recent analysis of that data and additional information gathered on the 4 August episode now makes it clear that North Vietnamese naval forces did not attack Maddox and Turner Joy that night in the summer of 1964.

In response to the actual attack of 2 August and the suspected attack of 4 August, the President ordered Seventh Fleet carrier forces to launch retaliatory strikes against North Vietnam. Of greater significance, on 7 August the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which enabled Johnson to employ military force as he saw fit against the Vietnamese Communists. In the first months of 1965, the President ordered the deployment to South Vietnam of major U.S. ground, air, and naval forces. Thus began a new phase in America's long, costly Vietnam War." - Navy

Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed" According to Official History and Intercepts

- Newly Declassified National Security Agency Documents Show Analysts Made "SIGINT fit the claim" of North Vietnamese Attack

"The largest U.S. intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, today declassified over 140 formerly top secret documents -- histories, chronologies, signals intelligence [SIGINT] reports, and oral history interviews -- on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Included in the release is a controversial article by Agency historian Robert J. Hanyok on SIGINT and the Tonkin Gulf which confirms what historians have long argued: that there was no second attack on U.S. ships in Tonkin on August 4, 1964." - National Security Archive

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 Years Later

- Flawed Intelligence and the Decision for War in Vietnam- Signals Intercepts, Cited at Time, Prove Only August 2nd Battle, Not August 4; Purported Second Attack Prompted Congressional Blank Check for War - National Security Archive

(See also: March 13, 1962 - America's top military leaders, who were staunchly right-wing, drafted "Operation Northwoods" which were secret plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba)

"Ruby was charged with murder and stood trial in February and March 1964. His attorney, Melvin Belli, argued for an insanity verdict, but the jury convicted Ruby and condemned him to die.Ruby won an appeal on grounds of fairness because he had been denied a change of venue. A Texas court ordered a new trial, but Ruby died of cancer on January 3, 1967, before it could be held." - Crime Library

• June 5, 1968 - Senator Robert Kennedy, the favored Democratic candidate in the next Presidential election, is shot by 24 yr. old Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan who allegedly shoots him with a .22 cal gun, but conspiracy theories emerge when more bullet holes were counted than Sirhan's gun had bullets, the fatal bullet that hit RFK hit the back of his neck at very close range yet Sirhan shot at him from the front, Sirhan was seen whispering to a lady in a polka dotted dress who smiled right before he began shooting and then the lady in the dress was seen running away from the scene exuberantly crying, "We shot Kennedy!", no formal security people were hired to protect RFK at his event, and Sirhan's lawyer claims he was "hypnotized" and didn't even shoot RFK.

"Senator Robert Kennedy has been shot and seriously wounded shortly after giving a victory speech to celebrate his win in the California Primary in a Los Angeles hotel.

The 42-year-old senator was greeting hotel workers while being escorted through the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel when a gunman, named as Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan, fired shots from a .22 calibre gun.

The 24-year-old was immediately set upon by Mr Kennedy's body guards and then arrested and taken away by police.

It is thought Mr Kennedy's well documented support for Israel led to the attack.

Mr Kennedy is favourite in the running to be named as the Democrat candidate in the next election.

(In Context)Robert Kennedy's death was announced the following day.There are many theories about the death of Robert Kenndy disputing the conviction of Sirhan Sirhan.

Conflicting reports of events, the trajectory of the bullets and the number of bullet holes found compared with the round of bullets in the fired gun have all led people to suggest possible conspiracy theories." - BBC 'On This Day'

"Odd as it seems, no formal security measurements were in effect during the event...A Gallup Poll showed that Americans believed "by a margin of 4 to 3 that the attack was a product of a conspiracy."

...the gunman was not hostile, nor impolite; he held friendly discourse...and answered the detective courteously. But, he seemed confused as if he really didn’t understand the seriousness of his crime.

The autopsy...also created a controversy. Sirhan Sirhan had carried an Iver-Johnson eight-cylinder handgun...Four of those had been fired at RFK...but there were five others who had been wounded in the pantry. Because there were more victims than accounted-for bullets, a "second gunman" theory was born.

The shot that...killed Kennedy – the one that entered the back of his neck,... was fired so close that it left thick powder burns on the skin...the shot was fired at a range no more distant than one-and-a-half inches. Yet, according to all witnesses, Sirhan Sirhan shot in front of Kennedy......a college kid and part-time waiter at the Ambassador Hotel, who said he had spotted Sirhan Sirhan before the shooting, standing near the tray table. What had drawn his attention to the would-be assassin was the woman to whom he was whispering...She...wore a "white dress with black or purple polka dots". Moments before Sirhan leaped forward to shoot, he murmured in her ear and she smiled.

That same night at the police station a 21-year-old campaign worker named Sandra Serrano also told the investigators about a mysterious polka dot-wearing lady...she said, a trio comprised of a young...male who looked like Sirhan Sirhan...entered the ballroom. Not long after, claimed Serrano, the couple, minus the third party, came bolting down the steps, exuberantly crying, "We shot Kennedy!"

The polka-dot lady had also been seen by a police sergeant named Paul Sharaga...he overheard a giggling couple pass by him, mumbling, "We shot Kennedy!" The female wore polka dots.

Within weeks after the trial, the Los Angeles Free Press ran a story by reporters Lillian Castellano and Floyd Nelson that resurrected the possibility of another gunman at the crime scene. They had photographic "proof" of two extra bullet holes in the wooden divider...There was a catch. The police had removed the door jamb...When the Los Angeles City Council, under pressure, demanded an answer...Assistant Police Chief Daryl Gates responded...yes, the police thought they might have been bullet holes.

Confounding the issue was the incessant question as to how Kennedy was shot in the back by a man who approached him from the front.

Stranger, all records of the trial proceedings referring to the testimony of seven forensic experts about the crime scene have disappeared.

"Attorney Lawrence Teeter, representing Sirhan Sirhan, believes that his client was hypnotized that evening and made to serve as someone’s puppet. "An unconscious perpetrator does not commit a crime," Teeter expanded. "He was not aware of what happened…(He) was out of position, out of range and could not have shot Senator Kennedy."Meanwhile, Sirhan Sirhan remains in prison, having been denied his latest parole attempt in 1997, awaiting his next hearing in the year 2000. He is a model prisoner who continues to claim his innocence." - Court TV

"Propane gas explosions, described by the Fire Department as accidental, shook the skeletal south tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan yesterday, injured six workmen and caused a suspension of operations for 2,000 other construction men and employees of nearby businesses." - New York Times (03/17/70)

• September 6-12, 1970 - Four New York-bound airliners are hijacked over western Europe by a militant Palestinian group and later three of the planes are blown up on an airfield in Jordan.

"Four New York-bound airliners have been hijacked over western Europe in an unprecedented operation carried out by a militant Palestinian group.

Three of the planes taken over by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have been flown to two different locations in the Middle East.

The TWA and Swissair planes were flown to an airfield in Jordan and the Pan American airliner to Beirut." - BBC

"Palestinian militants have blown up the three planes they have been holding at an airfield in the Jordanian desert.

Two of the planes had been captured by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) six days ago.

The last plane was seized on 9 September on a flight from Bombay to London and forced to join the others at Dawson's Field airstrip - a former RAF base." - BBC

(See also: 9/11 - The most devastating and unprecedented terrorist attack in history happens in the United States of America allegedly committed by 19 radical Arab Muslims who hijacked four commercial airliners)

• 1971 - Asbestos insulating material had only been sprayed up to the 64th floor of the World Trade Center towers.

"Until 30 years ago, asbestos was added to flame-retardant sprays used to insulate steel building materials, particularly floor supports. The insulation was intended to delay the steel from melting in the case of fire by up to four hours.

In the case of the World Trade Center, emergency plans called for this four-hour window to be used to evacuate the building while helicopters sprayed to put out the fire and evacuated persons from the roof.

The use of asbestos ceased in the 1970s following reports of asbestos workers becoming ill from high exposures to asbestos fibers.

In 1971, New York City banned the use of asbestos in spray fireproofing. At that time, asbestos insulating material had only been sprayed up to the 64th floor of the World Trade Center towers.

Levine’s company, Asbestospray, was familiar with the World Trade Center construction, but failed to get the contract for spraying insulation in the World Trade Center. Levine frequently would say that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." - FOX News (09/14/01)

• June 17, 1972 - Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel.

"Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

All wearing rubber surgical gloves, the five suspects were captured inside a small office within the committee's headquarters suite.

Near where they were captured were two open file drawers, and one national committee source conjectured that the men were preparing to photograph the contents.

The five men were identified as:

• Edward Martin, alias James W. McCord, of New York City and perhaps the Washington metropolitan area. Martin said in court yesterday that he retired from the CIA two years ago. He said he presently is employed as a "security consultant."

• Frank Sturgis of 2515 NW 122d St., Miami. Prosecutors said that an FBI check on Sturgis showed that he had served in the Cuban Military army intelligence in 1958, recently traveled to Honduras in Central America, and presently is the agent for a Havana salvage agency.

• Eugenio R. Martinez of 4044 North Meridian Ave., Miami. Prosecutors said that Martinez violated the immigration laws in 1958 by flying in a private plane to Cuba. He is a licensed real estate agent and a notary public in Florida.

• Virgilio R. Gonzales [Editor's Note: Spelling was corrected in subsequent stories to Gonzalez] of 930 NW 23d Ave., Miami. In Miami yesterday, his wife told a Washington Post reporter that her husband works as a locksmith at the Missing Link Key Shop.

• Bernard L. Barker of 5229 NW 4th St., Miami. Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, he received a call from Barker's wife. "She said that her husband told her to call me if he hadn't called her by 3 a.m.: that it might mean he was in trouble."

Silbert called the men professionals with a "clandestine" purpose." - Washington Post (06/18/72)

• June 23, 1972 - In a recorded meeting between President Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in the Oval Office about the Watergate scandal, Nixon uses the expression "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" in which Haldeman years later in his 1978 book, The Ends of Power, revealed that Nixon's references to the Bay of Pigs was "code" for the Kennedy assassination.

"Nixon: When you get in these people when you...get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!Haldeman: OK" - Watergate.info

"Years later, former C.B.S. correspondent Dan Schorr called me. He was seeking information concerning the F.B.I. investigation Nixon had mounted against him in August, 1971.

Schorr later sent me his fascinating book Clearing the Air. In it I was interested to find that evidence he had gleaned while investigating the C.I.A. finally cleared up for me the mystery of the Bay of Pigs connection in those dealings between Nixon and Helms. 'It's intriguing when I put Schorr's facts together with mine. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination." - The Ends of Power, by H.R. Haldeman, Joseph Dimona; 1978 [Reprinted at: Spartacus Educational]

• September 1972 - President Nixon forms a high-level government panel to develop plans to protect the nation against terrorist acts ranging from "dirty bombs" to airline missile attacks and the panel included such people as the first future 9/11 Commission head Henry Kissinger and future NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani who had suggested relaxing intelligence collection guidelines on this panel which would eventually happen after 9/11 with the passage of the Patriot Act.

Nixon foresaw terrorist attacks

"Nearly three decades before the September 11 attacks, a high-level government panel developed plans to protect the nation against terrorist acts ranging from radiological "dirty bombs" to airline missile attacks, according to declassified documents.

"Unless governments take basic precautions, we will continue to stand at the edge of an awful abyss," Robert Kupperman, chief scientist for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, wrote in a 1977 report that summarized nearly five years of work by the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism.

The group was formed in September 1972 by President Nixon after Palestinian commandos slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. The committee involved people as diverse as Henry Kissinger to a young Rudolph W. Giuliani, the once-secret documents show.Eventually, the group's influence waned as competing priorities, a change of presidents ushered in by Watergate, bureaucratic turf battles and a lack of spectacular domestic attacks took their toll.

But before that happened, the panel identified many of the same threats that would confront President Bush at the dawn of the 21st century.

Committee members identified commercial jets as a particular vulnerability, but raised concerns that airlines would not pay for security improvements such as tighter screening procedures and routine baggage inspections.

"The trouble with the plans is that airlines and airports will have to absorb the costs and so they will scream bloody murder should this be required of them," according to a White House memo from 1972.

Thousands of pages of heavily blacked-out records and memos obtained by the Associated Press from government archives and under the Freedom of Information Act show the task force also discussed defending commercial aircraft against being shot down by portable missile systems.Though the CIA routinely updated the committee on potential terrorist threats and plots, task force members learned quickly that intelligence gathering and coordination was a weak spot, just as Mr. Bush would discover three decades later.

Long before he was mayor and helped New York recover from the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Mr. Giuliani told the committee in May 1976 that he feared legal restrictions were thwarting federal agents from collecting intelligence unless there had been a violation of the law.

Mr. Giuliani, who at that time was the associate deputy attorney general in President Ford's Justice Department, suggested relaxing intelligence-collection guidelines — something that occurred with the Patriot Act three decades later." - Washington Times (01/24/05)

(See also: 9/11 - Mayor Rudy Giuliani thinks the first crash into the WTC was an attack and not an accident; October 26, 2001 - Only a month and a half after 9/11, the 342 page USA PATRIOT ACT is signed into law; November 29, 2002 - Bush names Henry Kissinger to head 9/11 investigations)

• September 11, 1973 - Chilean armed forces headed by General Augusto Pinochet and allegedly backed by the U.S. CIA take control of the country in a coup d'etat against President Salvador Allende.

"In 1973, when high inflation and economic shortages had plunged the country into near chaos, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, staged a coup against President Allende.

Following the coup many Allende supporters began to allege that the president's overthrow had been the result of an American orchestrated scheme. Although the CIA denies actively supporting in the coup and claims that it was merely informed of it, recently declassified documents have raised the possibility that the CIA was much more actively involved in the coup than it has previously admitted." - Wikipedia

(See also: September 11, 1990 - President George H. W. Bush twice references the phrase "new world order" in an address before congress)

• December 12, 1973 - British spy chiefs secretly warned that the United States would be prepared to invade Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to seize their oilfields following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

"British spy chiefs secretly warned that the United States would be prepared to invade Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to seize their oilfields following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, documents released today disclose.

Files released to the British National Archives under the 30-year rule for classified documents show the intelligence agencies believed the US was ready to take military action to prevent further disruption to oil supplies.

It followed the decision in October 1973 by the Arab nations to slash oil production, and send prices rocketing, while imposing a complete embargo on the Americans over their support for Israel.

Although the war in the Middle East was over after three weeks, a secret assessment drawn up for government ministers by the Joint Intellgence Committee (JIC), including the heads of MI5 and MI6, concluded the US would rather risk military action than be held to ransom again by the Arabs.

The report, dated December 12, 1973 and marked "UK Eyes Alpha", described the seizure of the oil-producing areas in the region as "the possibility uppermost in American thinking".The JIC calculated the US could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking the oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi, with total reserves of more than 28 billion tons.

However, it said the Republican administration of President Richard Nixon could be prepared to take the risks, if it was faced with the "dark scenario" of renewed Arab-Israeli conflict and further protracted oil restrictions.

It said that the United States would even consider pre-emptive action if Arab governments, "elated by the success of the oil weapon," began imposing new demands." - Australian Broadcasting Corp (01/01/04)

• February 17, 1974 - Army Pvt. Robert Preston steals an Army helicopter from Fort Meade, MD, and flies it to the White House where he touches down briefly, then leaves back toward Fort Meade, then flies back to the White House after being chased by two Maryland State Police helicopters and lands on the grounds after being shot at by EPS officers.

Air Incursions and Attempted Air Incursions"Robert K. Preston (February 1974). On February 17, 1974, Robert Preston, a private in the Army, stole an Army helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, and flew it to the White House Complex. He passed over the Executive Mansion and then returned to the south grounds, where he hovered for about 6 minutes and touched down briefly approximately 150 feet from the West Wing. Members of the EPS did not know who was piloting the aircraft and were not aware that it had been stolen from Fort Meade. They made no attempt to shoot down the helicopter.Preston left the area of the White House and flew the helicopter back toward Fort Meade. He was chased by two Maryland State Police helicopters, one of which he forced down through his erratic maneuvers. Preston then returned to the White House Complex. As he lowered himself to about 30 feet above the south grounds, EPS officers barraged the helicopter with shotgun and submachine gunfire. Preston immediately set the riddled aircraft down. He was injured slightly." - Federation of American Scientists. See also: Wikipedia

White House has been scene of attacks, violence many times

"Army Pvt. Robert Preston got further with a similar plan that year. He stole a helicopter from Fort Meade, Md., flew to the White House, touched down briefly near the West Wing, then flew back toward Fort Meade with Maryland State Police helicopters in pursuit, returned to the White House and was shot down on the South Lawn." - Post-Gazette (02/08/01)

• February 22, 1974 - Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the White House in order to kill Richard Nixon.

"In 1974, a psychotic celebrity stalker named Samuel Byck ended his not-illustrious non-career as a homicidal maniac by attempting to storm a parked aircraft and hijack it, with the intent of crashing it into the White House in order to kill Richard M. Nixon. The plan was not well thought out. Rather than buy a ticket and hijack a plane in flight, he chose to shoot his way onto the plane at the airport with the predictable result that he was gunned down by the police. Wounded, he committed suicide rather than surrender." - Rotten.com

"...Samuel Byck, an unemployed salesman from Philadelphia who on Feb. 22, 1974 attempted to hijack an Atlanta-bound jet leaving Baltimore-Washington International Airport -- murdering a police officer and being shot to death himself. It was days before authorities discovered, via tape recordings left behind by the 44-year-old killer, that he had planned to fly the hijacked plane into the Nixon White House." - Newsday (12/19/04)

White House has been scene of attacks, violence many times

"In one, an unemployed Philadelphia salesman, Samuel Byck, got into a shootout with airports guards at Baltimore-Washington International Airport when he tried to hijack a Delta commercial airliner. After he committed suicide, officials learned that he had planned to crash the plane into the White House." - Post-Gazette (02/08/01)

(See also: October 25, 1944 - The first use of airplanes in suicide attacks are preformed by the Japanese "Kamikaze's"; 1978 - 'The Medusa Touch' is about a man who uses his telekinetic powers to cause a jumbo jet to crash into a building; December 29, 2004 - "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", a movie based on the real-life of Samuel Byck who tried to hijack a commercial jet and crash it into the White House in order to kill Richard Nixon)

• August 9, 1974 - President Nixon resigns because of the Watergate scandal, becoming the first President in U.S. history to resign from office.

"Richard Milhous Nixon announced last night that he will resign as the 37th President of the United States at noon today.Vice President Gerald R. Ford of Michigan will take the oath as the new President at noon to complete the remaining 2 1/2 years of Mr. Nixon's term.

After two years of bitter public debate over the Watergate scandals, President Nixon bowed to pressures from the public and leaders of his party to become the first President in American history to resign.

Vice President Ford, who spoke a short time later in front of his Alexandria home, announced that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will remain in his Cabinet.

Mr. Nixon said he decided he must resign when he concluded that he no longer had "a strong enough political base in the Congress" to make it possible for him to complete his term of office.While the President acknowledged that some of his judgments "were wrong," he made no confession of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" with which the House Judiciary Committee charged him in its bill of impeachment.

Alexander M. Haig Jr., the former Army vice chief of staff who was brought into the White House as staff chief following the resignation of H.R. (Bob) Haldeman on April 30, 1973, has been asked by Mr. Ford to remain in his present position.

The march of events that brought about the President's downfall turned its last corner Monday when Mr. Nixon released the partial transcripts of three taped conversations he held on June 23, 1972 with Haldeman." - Washington Post (08/09/74)

• September 8, 1974 - President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon of any wrongdoings in the Watergate scandal.

"On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon of any wrongdoings in the Watergate scandal. The pardon actually came out less than a month after Nixon resigned the presidency. Quoting his official pardon: "It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States." - About.com

• 1975 - In the movie "Three Days of the Condor", Robert Redford plays Joseph Turner (aka Condor) who works for the CIA reading books to find information of plots and scenarios to check against actual CIA Plans and Operations for leaks or new ideas.

"A man named Turner works for the CIA reading books and postulating possible scenarios that could be applied to intelligence work. He goes out to get lunch but when he returns everyone at the center has been killed. He calls his superior and asks for someone to bring him in, he tells him that his section chief will get him but when he arrives, the man tries to shoot him, he manages to shoot back and escape. In an act of desperation, the abducts a woman and forces her to shelter him until he can figure out what is going on. When someone goes to the woman's house and tries to kill him, he kills the man and discovers that he has a connection to the CIA, which means that someone in the CIA is behind the attempt on him."- Internet Movie Database Inc.

"TURNER: Listen. I work for the CIA. I'm not a spy. I read mystery novels, adventures, journals, everything published all over the world. We feed the plots -- dirty tricks, codes, anything -- into a computer, to check against actual CIA Plans and Operations. We look for leaks. Or new ideas." - ScreenTalk.biz (Page 55 in the pdf.)

• February 14, 1975 - Trade Center Hit By 6-Floor Fire; Blaze Starts on the 11th 16 Men Are Injured

"A three-alarm fire broke out in the 11th-floor offices of the B.F. Goodrich Company in the north tower of the World Trade Center just before midnight last night, and spread through an inner-service core to the ninth and 14th floors." - New York Times (02/15/75) [Reprinted at: PrisonPlanet.com]

• March 6, 1975 - The Abraham Zapruder film is first shown on TV, more than 11 years after JFK's assassination.

March 6, 1975

"ABC News reporter Geraldo Rivera convinced network executives to show Groden’s version of the film on his weekly Good Night America talk show. It was the first time the public saw the film in motion. Many believed the backward movement of the president’s head and upper body "proved" the fatal shot came from the front, not from behind in the Book Depository." - jfk.org

"In March 1975, on the ABC late-night television show Good Night America (hosted by Geraldo Rivera), assassination researchers Robert Groden and Dick Gregory presented the first-ever network television showing of the Zapruder home movie. The public's response and outrage to that first television showing quickly led to the forming of the Hart-Schweiker investigation, contributed to the Church Committee Investigation on Intelligence Activities by the United States, and resulted in the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation." - wikipedia

"A series of seven suspicious fires, including an extensive two-alarm blaze, struck the World Trade Center in quick succession last night, keeping harried firemen scurrying from floor to floor and tower to tower for more than two hours." - New York Times (05/20/75)

• November 20, 1975 - Donald H. Rumsfeld becomes the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense under the Ford Administration.

"To replace Schlesinger, President Ford chose Donald H. Rumsfeld. Born on 9 July 1932 in Chicago, Rumsfeld graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and then spent three years in the U.S. Navy as an aviator and flight instructor. Following naval service, Rumsfeld worked in Washington as an assistant to two different congressmen and then, between 1960 and 1962, at a Chicago investment banking firm. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1962, he was reelected for three more terms. In 1969 he resigned from Congress to join the Nixon administration as an assistant to the president and director of the Office Of Economic Opportunity; later he served as counselor to the president and director of the Cost of Living Council. In February 1973 he became U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, returning to Washington in August 1974 to head Gerald Ford's transition team and then became assistant to the president, directing the White House Office of Operations and serving as coordinator of the White House Staff. At the time of his designation as secretary of defense, Rumsfeld was one of President Ford's closest associates and advisers.Sworn in on 20 November 1975, at age 43 the youngest secretary of defense to date, Rumsfeld served exactly 14 months in the office. Although he instituted some organizational changes at the Pentagon, including appointment of a second deputy secretary of defense (a position created in 1972 but never previously filled) and consolidation of several offices in OSD, Rumsfeld concentrated more on the political aspects of his job. More than any of his predecessors, he served as a roving ambassador for the Defense Department, traveling widely in the United States and abroad and discussing defense issues through numerous speeches, press conferences, and interviews.Although he supported the Ford administration's efforts at detente, Rumsfeld, like Schlesinger, sought to reverse the gradual decline in the Defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces. He made clear his agreement with Schlesinger's strategic and budget initiatives and that he would press forward with them." - DoD

(See also: March 21, 1989 - Dick Cheney becomes 17th U.S. Secretary of Defense; January 20, 2001 - Rumsfeld becomes U.S. Secretary of Defense for the second time)

"George Herbert Walker BushTENURE AS DIRECTOR 30 January 1976–20 January 1977APPOINTED 3 November 1975 by President Gerald R. Ford; confirmed by Senate, 27 January 1976; sworn in, 30 January 1976EARLIER CAREER Served in World War II as naval aviator in the Pacific; Member of Congress, 7th District, Texas, 1967-71; Ambassador to the United Nations, 1971-72; Chairman, Republican National Committee, 1973-74; Chief, US Liaison Office, People’s Republic of China, 1974-75" - CIA

"William Colby led the Central Intelligence Agency through some of its most turbulent days during the 1970s.But some people in the Ford administration had a problem with how often Colby cooperated with Congress. For example, he gave Congress a list of past CIA actions that were unethical, unauthorized, or immoral. They included plans to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro and other international leaders; unauthorized perusal of Americans' mail, and psychedelic drug experiments conducted without the consent of the Americans being tested. In late 1975, President Ford announced that George Bush would replace him." - CNN (05/06/96)

(See also: April 28, 1996 - Former CIA Director William Colby is reported missing after a Marine Colonel's wife came to him to whistle blow military corruption; April 26, 1999 - Bush Sr. gets the CIA's headquarters compound in Langley, Virginia named after him)

• 1976 - James R. Bath, a friend of George W. Bush from the Texas Air National Guard, opens an aircraft brokerage firm in which some of his investors are former Texas Gov. John Connally (who was shot riding with JFK), Saudi financier Ghaith Pharaon (an alleged B.C.C.I. front man), and Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz (a major BCCI shareholder and husband to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters).

"The Harken Energy folks are not the only Texas-based colleagues of George W. Bush with fortuitous, if not extraordinary, Arab connections. Another is the mysterious Houston businessman James R. Bath, a deal broker whose alleged associations run from the CIA to a major shareholder and director of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International. The President's son has denied that he ever had business dealings with Bath, but early 1980s tax records reviewed by TIME show that Bath invested $50,000 in Bush's energy ventures and remained a stockholder until Bush sold his company to Harken in 1986.Bath's penchant for secrecy has been frustrated by a feud with a former business partner, Bill White, who claims that Bath was a front man for CIA business operations. White contends that Bath has used his connections to the Bush family and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen to cloak the development of a lucrative array of offshore companies designed to move money and airplanes between the Middle East and Texas. White, an Annapolis graduate and former Navy fighter pilot, claims it was Bentsen's son Lan who suggested that White go into the real estate development business with Bath, a former Air Force fighter pilot.Bath, 55, acknowledges a friendship with George W. Bush that stems from their service together in the Texas Air National Guard, and says he is "slightly" acquainted with the President. But Bath vehemently denies White's accusations. "I am not a member of the CIA or any other intelligence agency," he says, describing White's portrayal as a "fantasy." Even so, Bath, while insisting he is nothing more than a "small, obscure businessman," is associated with some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. and Middle East. Private records show, and associates confirm, that Bath is a "representative" for several immensely wealthy Saudi families, an unusual position for any small-time Texas businessman.Bath got his start in real estate in 1973 by forming a partnership with Lan Bentsen. One purpose, sources tell TIME, was to find investments for the Senator's blind trust.Bath opened his own aircraft brokerage firm in 1976, but his Middle East connections first surfaced two years later, when he became a shareholder and director of Houston's Main Bank. His fellow investors were former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Connally; Saudi financier Ghaith Pharaon, an alleged B.C.C.I. front man; and Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz, who subsequently became a major B.C.C.I. shareholder.The firm that incorporated Bath's companies in the Cayman Islands is the same one that set up a money-collecting front company for Oliver North in the Iran-contra affair.Even if Bath is a clandestine public servant, the U.S. may not always get a bargain. The Houston Post reported last year that the U.S. had spent millions of dollars more than necessary by fueling military aircraft, including Air Force One, at privately owned Southwest Airport Services at Ellington Field rather than using a government fuel station there. Bath operates and holds a majority ownership stake in Southwest Airport Services, which the Post said was charging a markup of as much as 60% on the fuel. So far, the paper's charges have prompted no official investigations." - Time (10/28/91) [Reprinted at: krigskronikan.com]

"The 147th has been dubbed the "champagne unit" by critics because many sons of powerful Texans got assigned there during the Vietnam War, including the late Gov. John Connally's son and both of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's. Bush's father was a U.S. congressman from Houston at the time. The politically connected James R. Bath, who has Middle Eastern ties, also served in the unit as a pilot. He and Bush went into the oil business together after their Guard duty. Bath has also done business with Lan Bentsen. The late Gov. Connally, moreover, had invested in Bath's aircraft brokerage firm." - WorldNetDaily (02/18/04)

"Here's how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters." - Fortune (01/22/03)

"As Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Connally became one of the most influential members of the Cabinet, and was designated chief spokesman of the Nixon Administration in matters relating to the economic program to halt inflation and spur industrial productivity, a program he helped design and present to the Congress.A long-time associate of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he served first as secretary in 1939 in the House of Representatives and later as Administrative Assistant in 1949 in the United States Senate, Mr. Connally earned a distinguished World War II record between those assignments. Upon his return from naval service in 1946, he became president, general manager and attorney for radio station KVET in Austin, Texas, a business he helped organize.President Kennedy appointed Mr. Connally Secretary of the Navy on December 27, 1961. He later successfully ran for Governor of Texas. Governor Connally was critically wounded while riding with President Kennedy when the President was assassinated in Dallas, Texas in November 1963.Long active in Democratic Party affairs, Mr. Connally rose above partisan politics to serve on President Nixon's Advisory Council on Executive Organization in 1969-1970, and subsequently was appointed by the President to be a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1970.Mr. Connally died on June 15, 1993." - US Treasury

(See also: November 22, 1963 - Democratic President John F. Kennedy is assassinated; January 22, 2003 - 9/11 Commission chairman, Thomas Kean, has a business link to Khalid bin Mahfouz, husband to one of Osama Bin Laden's sisters)

• 1977 - George Bush received $50,000 for his oil start up company, Arbusto Energy, from a fellow National Guard pilot Maj. James Bath who funneled money for one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers.

"Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) — billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds." - LA Times (01/11/04)

"Interestingly, Maj. James Bath also was suspended from flying in 1972 – one month after Bush, who would become his oil partner not long after they stopped flying. Reason: "Failure to accomplish annual medical examination," according to a report then by Maj. Gen. Fancis S. Greenlief of the National Guard Bureau here.Bath, who invested $50,000 in Bush's Arbusto firm, became a front man for Saudi investors, including Osama bin Laden's brother, and at one time last decade came under federal investigation for allegedly conspiring to secretly funnel Saudi dollars as part of a Saudi scheme to influence U.S. policy. Among other investments, the fighter pilot bought up airport-related property in Houston for his Saudi clients, securing a 5 percent cut for himself. He also owns a fuel station at Ellington Field, which has been accused of overcharging military aircraft, including Air Force One, millions of dollars." - WorldNetDaily (02/18/04)

"President Bush and the bin Laden family have been connected through dubious business deals since 1977, when Salem, the head of the bin Laden family business, one of the biggest construction companies in the world, invested in Bush's start-up oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc.James R. Bath, a friend and neighbor, was used to funnel money from Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem bin Laden, to set up George W. Bush in the oil business, according to The Wall Street Journal and other reputable sources." - American Free Press (10/07/01)

"Bush organized his first company, Arbusto Energy Inc. ("Ar-boo-stow" is Spanish for Bush) in 1977 on the eve of a run for Congress and quickly put it to use as a credential for the political contest. But according to records on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arbusto didn't start active operations until March 1979..." - Washington Post (07/30/99)

- Click photo to see a notarized trust agreement between Salem bin Laden and James Bath.

• 1978 - In the movie 'The Medusa Touch', Richard Burton plays Robert Morlar who uses his telekinetic powers to cause all sorts of mayhem including causing a jumbo jet to crash into a building.

"Set in a parallel universe in which Shaw Taylor reads the news, Richard Burton plays Robert Morlar - "the man with the power to create catastrophe", a writer of terrible yet inexplicably popular books.Morlar uses his telekinetic (now there's a 70s phrase) powers to cause all sorts of mayhem - He sends his parents over a cliff in a car, sets his school on fire, gets his next-door neighbour to jump out the window because of some bad fish, sends a jumbo jet into a tower block and causes the death of some American astronauts.The climax comes when "Minster Cathedral" collapses on live TV - "I will bring the whole crumbling edifice down on top of their heads! I tell you!" - as Morlar lies in a hospital bed after a murder attempt (it was Remick).French bloke rushes to the bedside, pulls out all those wires and stuff, and Morlar is dead. Except - aha . . . he's not!" - Nostalgia Central

(See also: February 22, 1974 - Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the White House; 1981 - 'Escape from New York', a movie that showed a terrorist hijacked Air Force One and crashes it into a NYC building just a few buildings away from the WTC)

• March 29, 1979 - The report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigating the shooting of JFK concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President and exonerates the Secret Service, FBI and CIA from being part of a conspiracy, but does conclude that there was a "high probability" that there were two gunmen, that the President was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, rips the Secret Service for inadequately protecting the President, and rips the departments and the Warren Commission for failing to adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy.

"I. Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Tex., November 22, 1963A. Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy. The second and third shots he fired struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President.B. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President.C. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.5. The Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.D. Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate.a. The Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties.3. The Department of Justice failed to exercise initiative in supervising and directing the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the assassination.c. The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.d. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments.4. The Central Intelligence Agency was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination.b. The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government." - NARA

• November 4, 1980 - Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States with ex-CIA Director George H. W. Bush as his Vice President.

"The former Hollywood actor and Republican governor of California Ronald Reagan is to be the next president of the United States.He has defeated Democrat Jimmy Carter in the US presidential elections by a huge majority.At the age of 69, Mr Reagan will be America's oldest president. His running mate, former head of the CIA George Bush, will be his vice-president." - BBC

• 1980's - U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, played a leading role in building up Iraq's military when Iraq was using chemical weapons.

"Newly released documents show that U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, played a leading role in building up Iraq's military in the 1980s when Iraq was using chemical weapons, a newspaper reports.It was Rumsfeld, now defense secretary and then a special presidential envoy, whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein led to the normalization of ties between Washington and Baghdad, according to the Washington Post.The cozy relationship was an effort to build a regional bulwark against America's enemies in Iran.The newspaper says a review of a large tranche of government documents reveals that the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush both authorized providing Iraq with intelligence and logistical support, and okayed the sale of dual use items — those with military and civilian applications — that included chemicals and germs, even anthrax and bubonic plague.The U.S. removed Iraq from its list of states that sponsor terrorism in 1982, and as Iran made gains on the battlefield, the Reagan administration decided to pass intelligence to Iraq.The policy to do this was captured in a November 1983 National Security Directive that is still classified, but apparently stated that U.S. policy was to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to stop Iran from winning.At the same time, there were multiple reports Iraq was using chemical weapons to repulse the Iranian advance; one State Department official told Secretary of State George Shultz that Iraq was engaging in "almost daily use of (chemical weapons)" against Iranian troops.This policy led to several Rumsfeld visits to Baghdad, as a private citizen working as a presidential envoy.According to State Department report, at his first meeting with Saddam, Rumsfeld told Hussein the U.S. wanted a full resumption of relations. While the defense secretary has since said he warned Iraq about the use of chemical weapons, notes of the meeting do not show this. Rumseld apparently did mention the chemical weapons concern in a meeting with an aide to Saddam.Congressional investigations after the Gulf War revealed that the Commerce Department had licensed sales of biological agents, including anthrax, and insecticides, which could be used in chemical weapons, to Iraq.When Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1987, there was anger in Congress and the White House. But a memo in 1988 from Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy stated that "The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is … important to our long-term political and economic objectives." - CBS (12/31/02)

• December 8, 1980 - Former Beatle John Lennon, arguably the most powerful left-wing and anti-war activist in the U.S. at the time and who was being harassed by the FBI, is shot dead by 25 yr. old Mark Chapman who later said that "voices" in his head had told him to kill the world-famous musician.

"Former Beatle John Lennon has been shot dead by an unknown gunman who opened fire outside the musician's New York apartment. The 40-year-old was shot several times as he entered the Dakota, his luxury apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, opposite Central Park, at 2300 local time.A police spokesman said a suspect was in custody, but he had no other details of the shooting."This was no robbery," the spokesman said, adding that Mr Lennon was probably shot by a "deranged" person.Witness reports say at least three shots were fired and others have claimed they heard six.(In Context)John Lennon was shot four times in the back by Mark Chapman who had asked the former Beatle for his autograph only hours before he laid in wait and killed him. Chapman pleaded guilty to gunning down Mr Lennon and is currently serving life in Attica prison near New York. He said he had heard voices in his head telling him to kill the world-famous musician." - BBC

"Of all Lennon's legacies, one of the most enduring, and perhaps the most impressive, is who his enemies were. The true measure of his greatness was that in the 1970s he terrified the most powerful man in the world.Shortly before the release of his powerful "Imagine" album in October 1971, Lennon and Yoko Ono decamped England and moved to New York. The album and the "Imagine" single immediately topped the charts and solidified Lennon's position as the world's most influential rock star. Lennon was at the height of his political involvement at this time, railing against the war in Vietnam and many other injustices. Within weeks of arriving in the U.S. he was meeting with Jerry Rubin and other members of the New Left.Lennon expressed interest in partaking in fund-raising, voter-registration anti-war rallies and concerts, which would take place in many of the 1972 primary states. With the full protection of the First Amendment (which protects citizens and noncitizens alike) Lennon's intended actions were completely legal.But some Republicans worried that the popularity of John Lennon could help galvanize the anti-war movement and result in a massive vote against Nixon. On February 4, 1972, Senator Strom Thurmond sent a secret memo (later brought to light via a Freedom Of Information Act request) in which he railed about Lennon and the danger he could cause the President's 1972 reelection campaign. The proposed solution? Revoke Lennon's visa. "If Lennon's visa is terminated it would be a strategy (sic) counter-measure." But, Thurmond noted, "caution must be taken with regard to the possible alienation of the so-called 18-year-old-vote if Lennon is expelled from the country."The result? John Lennon was on the receiving end of a four-year campaign of FBI surveillance and INS harassment. In 1975 the INS chief counsel on the case resigned his position, telling Rolling Stone that the U.S. government was being more vigorous in its attempts to deport John Lennon than it was in its attempts to expel Nazi war criminals.It's hard to think of a single artist or entertainer prior to, or since, John Lennon who had that kind of impact. No other creative artist has ever induced that level of fear in a man who is ostensibly the most powerful man in the world. Ideas, honesty, passion, humor and brilliant empathetic songs it seems were more powerful. Just imagine that...." - Time (12/08/00)

"The FBI has been ordered to hand over files on John Lennon by a judge after claims MI5 shadowed the late Beatle's political activities.The Los Angeles ruling by US District Judge Robert Takasugi brought to an end a 23-year legal battle by California professor Jonathan Wiener.He first requested the information in 1980, shortly after Lennon was shot.The files were gathered during the early 1970s, when Lennon participated in protests against the Vietnam War.Judge Takasugi rejected the US government's national security claims when making his ruling earlier this week.Wiener said the documents revealed efforts by President Richard Nixon to deport Lennon to silence his anti-war activities in 1971 and 1972."Lennon was planning a national concert tour through the United States to urge young people to vote," Wiener said."Nixon got wind of this and ordered Lennon to be deported so he couldn't do this concert tour." - BBC (10/01/04)

• 1981 - In the beginning of John Carpenter's film Escape from New York, a terrorist hijacks Air Force One in mid air and crashes it into a NYC building just a few buildings away from the WTC.

"The year is 1997. Due to huge crime rates, the United States turns its once great city of New York into a maximum security prison where hardcore criminals are put for life. All the bridges leading into the city are mined, a large wall is built along the shoreline and a large police force army is based there to stop or kill any attempted escapees. En route to a conference, the President, on board Air Force One, is forced to eject in a pod when a female terrorist takes over the controls and crashes the plane into a building." - Internet Movie Database Inc

(See also: 1978 - 'The Medusa Touch' is about a man who uses his telekinetic powers to cause a jumbo jet to crash into a building; September 12, 1994 - Frank Eugene Corder crashes a stolen Cessna airplane into the south lawn of the White House)

• January 20, 1981 - The 52 U.S. hostages in Iran are freed on the same day that Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president which caused the allegation that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign purposely postponed the release of the hostages in which an agreement was already reached in October to release them, thus preventing an "October surprise" that would have aided Jimmy Carter in his re-election bid.

"After more than a year of captivity under the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the 52 Americans taken hostage in the seizing of the U.S. embassy in Tehran were finally freed on January 20, 1981, the same day that Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the nation's 40th president.That was joyous news for the country and for Mr. Reagan who - unlike Lincoln and FDR - was spared the ordeal of having to begin his presidency with the nation in a state of crisis.The hostage crisis loomed large in the landslide win by Mr. Reagan, a Republican, over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in the fall of 1980. For one thing, Election Day fell on the one-year anniversary of the start of the crisis.On the Republican side, the presidential front runner from the first was Mr. Reagan, the former California governor who nearly won the GOP nod from President Gerald Ford four years earlier. But the initial field for the Republican nomination was crowded with the likes of George Bush the elder, Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and John Anderson. In the end, the race boiled down to Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush. The Gipper prevailed and named his opponent - his successor and the father of a future president - as his running mate." - CBS (01/21/01)

"October Surprise is a book by Gary Sick alleging that representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign arranged the Iran-Contra deal well in advance of the 1980 election where Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter.The alleged conspiracy was to postpone the release of the hostages held by Iran until after the election, thus preventing an "October surprise" that would have aided Carter, the incumbent.The most public face of the story is simply that though in October of 1980 an agreement was reached, after long negotiations, to unfreeze Iran's monetary assets for the safe return of the hostages, yet, for some reason, the hostages were not released until January 20, 1981, the very day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.The phrase also refers to any last minute trick by a party to sway the election, before the claims can be verified." - Wikipedia

• March 30, 1981 - Before the shooting of President Ronald Reagan, Scott Hinckley (the older brother of 25 yr. old accused shooter John Hinckley Jr.) is visited by Department of Energy auditors in which their Dad's energy company is threatened with a $2 million penalty for overcharging during oil price controls and who is scheduled to have dinner at the house of Vice President George H. W. Bush's son, Neil Bush, the following evening.

"A statement released by counsel for Vanderbilt Energy Corp. said the elder Hinckley had "temporarily relinquished his duties" as chairman of the Denver-based firm "because of a tragedy involving a member of his family."John Hinckley Jr., 25, who was arrested seconds after Reagan was shot in Washington, was being held Tuesday at a Marine base in Quantico, Va.The corporate statement did not mention any change for Scott B. Hinckley, vice president of operations for Vanderbilt and brother of John Jr.The father's move came amid confirmation that the Department of Energy was reviewing Vanderbilt's books. Jack Vandenberg, a DOE spokesman in Washington, said auditors met with Scott Hinckley in Denver on Monday.The Washington Star quoted an unnamed "White House official" as confirming that DOE auditors asked for an explanation of an overcharge when oil price controls were in effect between 1973 and 1981. The Star said DOE auditors told Scott Hinckley there was a possible penalty of $2 million for the overcharge.The Houston newspaper also reported that Scott Hinckley was to have dined Tuesday night in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons." - AP/Evergreen, CO (04/01/81) [Reprinted at: Here in Reality]

• March 30, 1981 - Seventy year old Ronald Reagan is shot on his 70th day in office under his left armpit supposedly by a flattened non-exploded .22 caliber 'devastator' bullet that ricocheted off and around his open limousine door when his arms were pinned down by a Secret Service agent hustling him in that was allegedly the 6th and last shot fired by John Hinckley Jr. who's family had donated large amounts of money to the Republican primary campaign of ex-CIA director and Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush.

"On March 30, 1981, just 70 days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., a deranged drifter who had briefly stalked President Jimmy Carter.As Reagan appeared outside the hotel, Hinckley fired six shots from a .22-caliber pistol, with Devastator bullets, hitting Reagan press secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy. Reagan was hit by a shot that ricocheted off his limousine.The Devastator bullets were designed to explode on impact, but only the one that hit Brady in the head erupted.The shot that hit Reagan flattened against the limousine and struck Reagan under the left armpit, leaving a puncture wound so small that neither Reagan nor his doctors knew he had been hit until his clothes were cut off in the emergency room.Reagan initially believed he had been injured when a Secret Service agent, Jerry Parr, pushed him roughly into the limousine and then jumped on top of him as the car sped away.The bullet glanced off a rib, collapsed Reagan's left lung and lodged an inch from his heart. The surgery to remove the bullet was a success, and Reagan left the hospital after a 13-day stay." - Tennessean (06/06/04)

"President Ronald Reagan has been shot and wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in Washington.First Lady Nancy Reagan is understood to be on her way to the hospital to visit her 70-year-old husband." - BBC "On this day: 30 March"

"The sixth and final bullet nearly killed the President. As aides rushed to push Reagan into his car, the bullet ricocheted off the car, then hit the President in the chest, grazed a rib and lodged in his lung, just inches from his heart. At first it was assumed that the bullet missed the President, and the limousine headed for the White House. Within seconds, however, the President began coughing up blood and the limousine changed course and sped for George Washington University Hospital, where the President underwent two hours of life-saving surgery." - Jurist/University of Pittsburgh School of Law

"Bush told the Post he knew the Hinckley family because they had made large contributions to the vice president's campaign. He said he could not recall meeting John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Reagan and three other men as they exited the Washington Hilton Hotel Monday.''They (the Hinckleys) are a nice family ... and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign,'' she said. ''I understand he (John Hinckley) was just the renegade brother in the family. They must feel awful.''Another of the vice president's sons, George W. Bush, lived in Lubbock in 1978 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress. Police have said John Hinckley Jr. lived in Lubbock at that time and once attended Texas Tech University." - UPI/Denver (03/31/81) [Reprinted at: Here in Reality]

• March 31, 1981 - Neil Bush, one of Vice President George H. W. Bush's sons, was to have John Hinckley Jr.'s brother, Scott Hinckley, over for dinner at their home as a date for his wife Sharon's friend.

"The newspaper said in a copyright story, Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana.In 1978, Neil served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the vice president's oldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.On Monday, Neil Bush said he did not know if he had ever met 25-year-old John Hinckley."I have no idea," he said. "I don't recognize any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him.Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as a date of a girl friend of hers. "I don't even know the brother. From what I know and I've heard, they (the Hinckleys) are a very nice family and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. I understand he was just the renegade brother in the family. They must feel awful," she said.The dinner was canceled, she added.George W. Bush said he was unsure whether he had met John W. Hinckley." -AP/Houston (03/31/81) [Reprinted at: Here in Reality]

"The Houston newspaper also reported that Scott Hinckley was to have dined Tuesday night in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.Neil Bush's wife Sharon said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as the date of one of her girlfriends." -AP/Evergreen, CO (04/01/81) [Reprinted at: Here in Reality]

(See also: 1999 - Media reports Columbine gunmen, Eric Harris, had written in his diary about a plot to hijack a plane and crash it into New York City)

• December 20, 1983 - Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam Hussein as part of a special Middle East envoy for the Reagan administration.

"The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons "almost daily" against Iran, it was reported yesterday.US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite militancy has been well known for some time, but using declassified government documents, the Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of the use of chemical weapons.The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons.The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says.On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz, was passed intelligence reports of "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" by Iraq.However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the administration to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq losing the war.In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve as a Middle East troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime and restore full diplomatic relations.Mr Rumsfeld has said that he "cautioned" the Iraqi leader against using banned weapons. But there was no mention of such a warning in state department notes of the meeting.A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the commerce department.Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m-worth (£930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare." - Guardian (12/31/02)

• December 1, 1984 - The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and the FAA conduct an aircraft fire suppression experiment in which they flew a fully fueled Boeing 720 via remote control and crash it into the ground which, oddly enough, crashes the same way that some eyewitnesses describe and officials say how allegedly Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

"In 1984 NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) teamed-up in a unique flight experiment called the Controlled Impact Demonstration (CID), to test the impact of a Boeing 720 aircraft using standard fuel with an additive designed to suppress fire.On the morning of December 1, 1984, a remotely controlled Boeing 720 transport took off from Edwards Air Force Base (Edwards, California), made a left-hand departure and climbed to an altitude of 2300 feet. It then began a descent-to-landing to a specially prepared runway on the east side of Rogers Dry Lake.The aircraft was remotely flown by NASA research pilot Fitzhugh (Fitz) Fulton from the NASA Dryden Remotely Controlled Vehicle Facility. Previously, the Boeing 720 had been flown on 14 practice flights with safety pilots onboard. During the 14 flights, there were 16 hours and 22 minutes of remotely piloted vehicle control, including 10 remotely piloted takeoffs, 69 remotely piloted vehicle controlled approaches, and 13 remotely piloted vehicle landings on abort runway.It was planned that the aircraft would land wings-level and exactly on the centerline during the CID, thus allowing the fuselage to remain intact as the wings were sliced open by eight posts cemented into the runway." - NASA, (CID) Aircraft Photo Gallery Contact Sheet

"In this photograph the B-720 is seen during the moments of initial impact. The left wing is digging into the lakebed while the aircraft continues sliding towards wing openers." - NASA

Steve Anderson - "...the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball."

David Marra - "The plane rolled left and then rolled right. Then he caught an edge of his wing on the ground." There is a helicopter pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there, then the plane cartwheeled into the building."

Mary Ann Owens - "The plane slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon. The impact was deafening. The fuselage hit the ground and blew up...I raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter area just before the nose crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon."

(See also: 1994 - NASA test involved 110 landings of a Boeing 737 airliner using GPS navigation; August 25, 2001 - Raytheon and the U.S. Air Force force lands a Boeing 727 in a anti-hijacking experiment)

• December 7, 1987 - The last airplane hijacking in the U.S. was a suicide hijacking which happened on Flight 1771.

(Note that the number 1771 is the combined #'s of two 9/11 flight's; Flight 11 and Flight 77.)

"USAir employee David Burke, recently fired for stealing money from a 'beer fund' kept by Flight Attendants, used his airport clearance to gain access to the aircraft, on which the USAir CEO was flying, without going through a security checkpoint. Upon reaching cruise altitude, Burke dropped a hand-written note into the USAir CEO's lap reading 'It's kind of ironical, isn't it? I asked for leniency for my family, remember? Well, I got none, and now you'll get none.' Burke then proceeded to the cockpit with a loaded .44, shot both pilots, and put the aircraft into a steep dive from which it would never recover." - AirDisaster.Com

Special Report: Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771

"David Burke then purchased a ticket on Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771, a daily non-stop along PSA's “Pacific Highway” between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This flight was also taken by Burke's supervisor, Raymond Thompson, every day on his commute home from the USAir Headquarters at LAX." - AirDisaster.com

• November 10, 1988 - The Air Force reveals the existence of the F-117A stealth fighter, fully operational since 1983.

"November 10th

1988. The Air Force revealed the existence of the Lockheed F-117A stealth fighter, operational since 1983." - Air Force

• March 21, 1989 - Richard B. Cheney becomes the 17th U.S. Secretary of Defense under the Bush Administration.

"President George Bush initially chose former Texas Sen. John G. Tower to be his secretary of defense. When the Senate in March 1989 rejected his nomination, Bush selected Rep. Richard B. (Dick) Cheney of Wyoming.

Cheney entered federal service in 1969 as a special assistant to the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1971 he became a White House staff assistant, and soon moved on to become assistant director of the Cost of Living Council, where he stayed until 1973. After a year in private business, he returned to the White House to become deputy assistant to President Gerald Ford (1974-75) and then White House chief of staff (1975-77).In November 1978 Cheney, a Republican, won election as Wyoming's representative at large in the House of Representatives. Reelected for five additional terms, he served several years on the House Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Budget Subcommittee.

Cheney's biggest challenge came in the Persian Gulf. On 1 August 1990 President Saddam Hussein of Iraq sent invading forces into neighboring Kuwait, a small oil-rich country long claimed by Iraq. An estimated 140,000 Iraqi troops quickly took control of Kuwait City and moved on to the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait border. Although taken by surprise, President Bush soon decided that the aggression could not stand. Cheney regarded Iraq's intrusion into Kuwait as a grave threat to U.S. interests. Fortunately, the United States had already begun to develop contingency plans for defense of Saudi Arabia by the U.S. Central Command, headed by General H. Norman Schwartzkopf.Shortly after the Iraqi invasion Cheney made the first of several visits to Saudi Arabia and secured King Fahd's permission to bring U.S. troops into his country. The United Nations took action, passing a series of resolutions condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and eventually demanded that Iraq withdraw its forces by 15 January 1991. By then, the United States had a force of about 500,000 stationed in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Other nations, including Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Syria, and Egypt, contributed troops, and other allies, most notably Germany and Japan, agreed to provide financial support for the coalition effort, named Operation Desert Shield." - DoD

• 1990's - Five of the alleged 9/11 hijackers receive training at secure US military bases.

Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases

"U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s. THREE OF THE alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.But there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations.The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers by the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight crashed into rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola, Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the south tower of the World Trade Center." - MSNBC (09/15/01) [Reprinted with: WayBack Machine]

• September 11, 1990 - President George H. W. Bush twice references the phrase "new world order" in an address before congress about the Persian Gulf crisis and the federal budget deficit.

Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit - September 11, 1990 "The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge: a new era -- freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace...At this very moment, they serve together with Arabs, Europeans, Asians, and Africans in defense of principle and the dream of a new world order." - Bush Library

(See also: September 11, 1973 - Chilean armed forces headed by General Augusto Pinochet and allegedly backed by the U.S. CIA; September 12, 1994 - Frank Eugene Corder crashes a stolen Cessna airplane into the south lawn of the White House; September 14, 2001 - Council on Foreign Relations board member Gary Hart says that the 9/11 attacks is a chance for the President of the United States to carry out a "new world order")

• October 24, 1990 - Operation Gladio, a clandestine "stay-behind" operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II throughout European countries, is publicly revealed after being kept secret for 45 years.

EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; Italy Discloses Its Web Of Cold War Guerrillas

"In Europe's new order, they are the spies who never quite came in from the cold, foot soldiers in an underground guerrilla network with one stated mission: To fight an enemy that most Europeans believe no longer exists.Theirs is a tale of secret arms caches and exotic code names, of military stratagems and political intrigues.At best, their tale is no more than a curious footnote to the cold war. The question is if, at worst, it could be the key to unsolved terrorism dating back two decades. Nowhere do the darker suspicions burn more intensely than in this capital whose appetite for conspiracy theories is insatiable and whose Parliament today began an investigation into where reality may lie.The focus of the inquiry is a clandestine operation code-named Gladio, created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. All this week, there have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries, including those that do not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.As disclosed in recent days by the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, Gladio, named after after the short, wide, double-edged sword used by gladiators in ancient Rome, came into being during the most gelid days of the cold war.It was originally an Italian creation, said Mr. Andreotti, who is scheduled to testify on Friday before a parliamentary commission studying bombings and massacres that claimed scores of lives in a terrorism wave that inundated Italy from 1969 to the early 1980's.The Prime Minister said last week that Gladio later evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. Over the years, he says, 622 Italians belonged to the operation -- civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives and who had fought in World War II or served in the peacetime forces.There was Mr. Andreotti's mention of the 1956 agreement with United States agencies, whose aim for decades was to make sure that the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West, never got a foothold in the Government. And there were long-reported links between Italian secret services and neo-Fascists.And there is the fact that the major unsolved acts of terrorism that rocked Italy in the 1970's are all presumed to be the work of people on the far right. Left-wing terrorists like the moribund Red Brigades somehow were caught and imprisoned.Swept up in the dispute is President Francesco Cossiga, who declared recently that it had been his "privilege" to help organize Gladio when he was in the Defense Ministry in the 1960's. Some Independent Left members of Parliament have since demanded his impeachment, but Mr. Cossiga remains unflappable.Fact is, he said, "I admire the fact that we have kept the secret for 45 years." - NY Times (11/16/90)

"Operation Gladio was a clandestine "stay-behind" operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II in Italy, as well as in other European countries. NATO stay-behind armies existed in all countries of Western Europe during the Cold War, including Turkey. Gladio’s existence, suspected since the 1984 revelations of Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra during his trial, was acknowledged by head of Italian government Giulio Andreotti on October 24, 1990 , who spoke of a "structure of information, response and safeguard".

'The existence of these clandestine NATO armies remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. It was code-named Gladio, the Latin word for a short double-edged sword. While the press claimed the NATO secret armies were 'the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II', the Italian government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret army."

Gladio in FinlandIn 1945, Interior Minister Leino exposes a secret stay-behind army which is closed down. In 1991, the media reveals in Sweden that a secret stay-behind army existed in neutral Finland with an exile base in Stockholm." - Wikipedia

• 1991 - The Port Authority warns that the WTC is a terrorist target and security consulting firm Securacom is informed.

In the Matter of World Trade Center Bombing Litigation.

"In 1991, because of the Gulf War and the increased risk of terrorism to United States targets, the Port Authority commissioned another security consulting firm, Burns and Roe Securacom, to prepare reports. Securacom was told by the Port Authority that the WTC was a terrorist target, and the report would help it plan its capital expenditures to maintain its competitive status with nearby buildings that offered more advanced security features." - courts.state.ny.us (01/20/04)

• 1993 - U.S. ignored a warning by a military advisor that the Pentagon and White House were vulnerable to attack from hijacked jets.

5:22:25 AM"The American Government was warned eight years ago that the Pentagon and White House were vulnerable to attack from hijacked jets, a military adviser has claimed.Dr Marvin Cetron said he prepared a 250-page report for the US intelligence agencies in 1993 which detailed his concerns but it was ignored.‘‘I said look, you’ve got a major problem here with aircraft, they could hit the White House or the Pentagon it’s a simple matter of coming in and making a left turn at the Washington Monument and running directly into the White House, or a right turn and going into the Pentagon,’’ Dr Cetron said.He added: ‘‘They understood and they ignored it, they took it out of the final draft.’’Republican Senator Wayne Allard, a member of the US administration’s armed forces committee, told Newsnight he was part of various hearings where the suggestion of possible attacks from hijacked jets were made.He said the warnings were similar to the events on Tuesday which saw four planes hijacked to deadly effect, but not exactly the same.’’ - TCM Breaking News (09/13/01)

"Stratesec was founded as Securacom (formerly the engineering firm Burns and Roe Securacom).

After the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began a multimillion-dollar, multiyear revamping of security in and around the Twin Towers. As Burns and Roe Securacom, the company had previously done security studies on the World Trade Center. Securacom was hired along with many other contractors for the upgrade and was praised in security industry publications, although the board membership of former President Bush's son Marvin went unnoticed.Marvin Bush had joined Securacom's board of directors in 1993, part of a new management team hired when Securacom separated from Burns and Roe, and he remained on the board through 1999." - Washington Spectator (02/15/05)

• January 23, 1993 - The Port Authority received an intelligence report from the FBI that there was a threat from the MidEast to blow up a major office building in New York.

In the Matter of World Trade Center Bombing Litigation.

"A. The Burns and Roe Securacom ReportIn 1991, because of the Gulf War and the increased risk of terrorism to United States targets, the Port Authority commissioned another security consulting firm, Burns and Roe Securacom, to prepare reports. Securacom was told by the Port Authority that the WTC was a terrorist target, and the report would help it plan its capital expenditures to maintain its competitive status with nearby buildings that offered more advanced security features. Securacom's draft report recognized that in the "aftermath of MidEast events," there would be a significant increase in "international activities." It included the subgrade utilities and the parking garage as areas of vulnerability. Its final report recommended that the WTC adopt a master plan approach to the development of security systems.On January 23, 1993, one month before the bombing, the Port Authority received an intelligence report from the FBI that there was a threat from the MidEast to blow up a major office building in New York. Some heightened security measures were implemented over that weekend (Jan. 23 was a Friday) as a result, including some increased patrols around the perimeter, which patrols also drove through the underground areas, but these were scaled back after the weekend was over." - courts.state.ny.us (01/20/04)

• February 26, 1993 - The WTC is bombed (with the same type of bomb used at Oklahoma City) by Islamic terrorists and the F.B.I. knew about the plot and were trying to thwart the bombing by having an informant, former Egyptian Army officer Emad Salem, secretly substitute a harmless powder for the explosives, but the plan was called off.

February 26, 1993: World Trade Center bomb terrorises New York"A suspected car bomb has exploded underneath the World Trade Center in New York killing at least five people and injuring scores more." - BBC, On This Day

"On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb planted by terrorists exploded in the underground garage of the north tower of the World Trade Center, opening a 30 meter wide hole through 4 sublevels of concrete. Six people were killed and at least 1,040 were injured. Six militant Islamist conspirators were convicted of the crime in 1997 and 1998 and given prison sentences of 240 years each.In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of "seditious conspiracy" to bomb the towers - no one was ever convicted for the actual bombing." - Wikipedia

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast; Plan to Foil Bomb Used at Trade Center

"Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court [on charges of involvement] in that attack.Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I.After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up." "He requested to meet me in the hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor."He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that."The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him, "He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York Office to go to Washington, D.C."Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the `New York people':"Well, of course not, because they don't want to get their butts chewed." - New York Times (10/28/93) [Reprinted at: News Mine; whatreallyhappened.com]

The FBI and the mad bombers

"According to tapes played at the trial of the "terrorists" in that case, the FBI planted Emad A. Salem to infiltrate an Arab group in New York. His job was to act, again, as an agent provocateur -- inciting violent attacks. It was Salem who convinced the other participants to bomb the World Trade Center. When he was asked to assemble the bomb, he went to the FBI to ask for harmless powder to avoid a catastrophe. The FBI essentially cut him off. To make a long, complicated story short and simple: The FBI spent $3 million of your tax money to blow up the World Trade Center.

Remember this the next time you hear about a so-called "terrorist incident." And, tell your representatives and senators it's time to rein in the mad bombers and provocateurs in our own government." - WorldNetDaily (12/09/99)

"Nichols also repeatedly called a boarding house in Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef. The same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in New York and in Oklahoma City. Nichols also repeatedly called a boarding house in Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef. The same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in New York and in Oklahoma City." - FOX News (04/17/05)

• February 26, 1993 - More than $1 billion in gold was being kept in the basement vaults of the WTC, the property of the Kuwaiti Government, in which the police at first believed the terrorist attack was an attempted gold robbery.

Crushed towers give up cache of gold ingots"Eight years ago, when the World Trade Centre was bombed by terrorists, more than $1 billion in gold was being kept in the basement vaults, the property of the Kuwaiti Government. The vaults withstood the blast.At first police believed the terrorist attack was an attempted gold robbery." - Times Online (11/01/01) [Archived at: 911research.wtc7.net]

(See also: October 30, 2001 - Recovery workers discover hundreds of gold bars in a delivery tunnel under WTC 5 that was being transported by a 10-wheel truck)

"The Branch Davidians are a religious group originating from the Seventh-day Adventist church. They are best known for the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas by federal agents, which ended in the deaths of about 80 of the church's members, including head figure David Koresh.On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) raided the Branch Davidian ranch in Mount Carmel, a rural area near Waco, Texas. The raid was conducted due to allegations of illegal weapons present on the property. The initial raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and five Davidians." - Wikipedia

• April 19, 1993 - The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidians ranch ends when the compound is completely destroyed by fire -- killing between 72 and 86 men, women, and children, including David Koresh -- as armored ATF vehicles retrofitted for gas warfare punching holes into the building to shoot tear gas cartridges inside.

"On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) raided the Branch Davidian ranch in Mount Carmel, a rural area near Waco, Texas. The raid was conducted due to allegations of illegal weapons present on the property. The initial raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and five Davidians. The subsequent 51-day siege ended on April 19 when the compound was completely consumed by fire killing between 72 and 86 men, women, and children, including Koresh.Newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved the recommendations of veteran FBI officials to proceed with the final assault after being told children were being abused inside the besieged complex. Armored vehicles retrofitted for gas warfare approached the building from two sides, upwind on a day when strong sustained winds gusted above 25mph. As the fighting vehicle first forced the tube of its gun into the building, debris and structural damage compromised a stairway. A few people spilled out, diving from windows and were immediately arrested by FBI agents. Most remained inside as fire engulfed the building. All this was broadcast worldwide from gyro-stabilized lenses set up at the nearest point FBI officials allowed press observers.The cause of the fatal fire is disputed. The government claims that the fire was intentionally set by Koresh and his followers as a suicidal act. Others claim that the fire was caused by the FBI's use of flammable CS gas grenades injected into the wooden buildings. The government points to audio and infrared visual recordings made just before the fire broke out to support their contention. Critics note that CS gas was injected into the building by armored vehicles in an unsafe manner immediately before the fire broke out.There have been unsubstantiated claims that some Branch Davidians were shot or fired upon as they tried to flee from the rear of the building. The claimants point to flashes of light on government aerial visual recordings as evidence of weapon fire at fleeing civilians. The aerial visual recordings were a type of forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, which captures heat, not light. The government says that these flashes are reflections of sunlight on broken glass in the compound as the aircraft passed over. However, because of the type of visual recordings, scientists say a reflection of light is not strong enough to be picked up by FLIR recording.The fact that fire crews were prohibited access to the burning buildings until they were reduced to ash has led many people to severely question the motivations of the FBI site chief. The FBI states that fire crews were not allowed into the compound due to the danger of explosives within the fire and possible weapons fire from surviving inhabitants.Autopsies revealed some of the women and children found beneath the remains of a concrete wall of a storage room died of skull injuries. The wall was in the path of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that penetrated the structure while injecting the usually non-lethal chemical weapon. Other victims were recovered from an underground crawlspace, which also had been in the path of the Bradley vehicle. Autopsy photographs depict bodies of other children locked in spasmic death poses unique to cyanide gas poisoning. Burning CS gas produces cyanide." - Wikipedia

(See also: April 19, 1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma is bombed; August 25, 1999 - The FBI admits incendiary tear gas cartridges were used on the final day of the Branch Davidian compound siege.)

• 1994 - U.S. intelligence officials had several warnings that terrorists might attack the United States on its home soil -- even using airplanes as weapons -- well before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"In 1998, U.S. intelligence had information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosives-laden airplane into the World Trade Center, according to a joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees.Another alert came just a month before the attacks, the report said, when the CIA sent a message to the FAA warning of a possible hijacking "or an act of sabotage against a commercial airliner." The information was linked to a group of Pakistanis based in South America.The report, which looked at more than a dozen federal intelligence agencies, suggests the United States had more information that might have helped to prevent the terror attacks than the government has previously said.As early as 1994 the government received information that international terrorists "had seriously considered the use of airplanes as a means of carrying out terrorist attacks," the report says.It said that in 1998, officials received reports concerning a "bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, areas." Officials received reports that al Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell in the United States and that bin Laden was attempting to recruit a group of five to seven young men from the United States to travel to the Middle East for training in conjunction with his plans to strike U.S. domestic targets.Government sources told CNN that operative is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom they describe as one of the masterminds of the September 11 attacks. He was indicted by the United States for plotting to bomb U.S. airliners in 1995. Officials believe he also plotted to have airplanes hijacked and flown into U.S. buildings.Stephen Push, who lost his wife in the World Trade Center, told lawmakers at the hearing, "Our loved ones paid the ultimate price for the worst American intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor." - CNN (09/12/02)

"House and Senate investigators have revealed as part of their investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks that intelligence agencies had many more warnings of possible terrorist attacks than were previously disclosed in public. Some involved targets on U.S. soil. At least a dozen warnings going back to the mid-1990s suggested airplanes could be used as weapons." - CBS (09/19/02)

(See also: 1981 - 'Escape from New York', a movie that showed a terrorist hijacked Air Force One and crashes it into a NYC building just a few buildings away from the WTC; 1994 - The novel Storming Heaven is about a terrorist who uses large commercial aircraft to drop bombs on major U.S. airports along with planning to target Washington D.C.; 1995 - U.S. warned of plot to hijack planes and attack the Pentagon, CIA headquarters from foiled Operation Bojinka; July 2001 - U.S. warned that Islamic terrorists might kill Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit)

• 1994 - An experiment at the Crows Landing NASA Facility in the Central Valley of California involved 110 landings of a Boeing 737 airliner using an experimental GPS navigation system.

Crows Landing Facility (NASA)

"Crows landing is a 1,500 acre NASA facility in the Central Valley of California that was transferred to the County in 1999, and is undergoing clean-up by the Navy for eventual civilian use. It was a Naval Auxiliary Air Station for decades, serving Moffett Field (located in Silicon Valley), and flight research at NASA's Ames Lab (also at Moffett). NASA aquired it from the Navy with the transfer of Moffett Field to NASA in 1993, and it has been used by NASA sporadically. A 1994 test at the site, for example, involved 110 landings of a 737 airliner using an experimental GPS navigation system.

• 1994 - The novel Storming Heaven by author Dale Brown is about a terrorist who uses large commercial aircraft to drop bombs on major U.S. airports along with planning to target Washington D.C.

"The USA is under siege. With chilling ruthlessness terrorist Henri Cazaux has demonstrated the vulnerability of the USA’s air defences by using large commercial aircraft to drop bombs on unsuspecting major airports. When he hits San Francisco Airport the destruction of life and property is enormous. The national panic that ensues reaches all the way to the White House.Only one man can end the chaos: Rear Admiral Ian Hardcastle. Charged by the President with re-establishing security in the skies, Hardcastle must take drastic action to control the emergency – and quickly. But then Cazaux sets his sights on the biggest target of all – the nation’s capital." - Megafortress.com

• September 12, 1994 - Frank Eugene Corder crashes a stolen Cessna airplane into the south lawn of the White House.

"September 12, 1994: A man, flying a stolen Cessna airplane, entered the prohibited airspace around the White House just before 2 a.m. After passing over the Ellipse, the man, identified as Frank Eugene Corder, crashed on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The plane struck a tree near the South Portico steps and hit a corner on the first floor of the White House. President Clinton and his family were not in the residence at the time. Corder was killed in the crash." - CNN (02/07/01)

"Over the years questions have been raised about White House security, given that it is located in a major urban area easily accessible to pedestrians. Attacks on the compound, surrounded by guardhouses and a 10-foot iron fence, have been attempted. In September 1994, a small plane piloted by a disturbed Maryland man evaded radar and crash-landed on the South lawn. The pilot died and no one else was injured." - Cincinnati Post (09/13/01)

White House has been scene of attacks, violence many times

"Suicide was the apparent motive of the man who crashed his small, single-engine Cessna plane into the White House the previous month.The air space over the White House is restricted to all air traffic (it's known as Area P-56, and helicopter tours through it are never permitted). But just before 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, 1994, Frank Eugene Corder, a 38-year-old truck driver from Maryland under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, flew a stolen Cessna 150L low down 17th Street, a block from the White House, made a U-turn near the Washington Monument and flew into the White House.His plane struck the mansion two stories below Clinton's bedroom, although the first family was not in the residence then. Secret Service agents had to scramble out of the way, and the plane damaged a giant magnolia tree planted by former President Andrew Jackson.Corder was killed. His relatives said he had been distraught over the breakup of his third marriage and his father's death. He had reportedly said his life was so hopeless that he might as well ram a plane into the White House.Radar didn't spot the small plane, and that fact frightened officials because it could have been loaded with explosives. There have been commercial airlines that have flown directly over the White House in violation of federal law; the number of such violations has doubled each year since 1996.Trying to improve security at the White House, officials have changed some landing patterns at nearby Reagan National Airport. But the missiles that protect the White House have never been fired out of fear that they might strike a downtown city block." - Post-Gazette (02/08/01)

Flight of the Intruder; A disturbed man's crash on the South Lawn exposes the White House's vulnerability to sneak air attacks

"Frank Eugene Corder seemed to know exactly how he wanted to die. Sometime before midnight on Sept. 11, he stole a single-engine plane from an airport north of Baltimore headed south to Washington, flew over the National Zoological Park and down to the Mall, probably using the Washington Monument as a beacon. As he neared the famed obelisk, he banked a tight U-turn over the Ellipse, came in low over the White House South Lawn, clipped a hedge, skidded across the green lawn that girds the South Portico and crashed into a wall two stories below the presidential bedroom. Corder was killed on impact." - Time (09/26/94)

(See also: February 22, 1974 - Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the White House in order to kill Richard Nixon)

• December 24, 1994 - An Islamic terrorist group hijacks an Air France commercial airliner and planned to crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

Terror from the sky

"Nonetheless, the Western security intelligence community has been aware of terrorist consideration of the airborne suicide option for nearly three decades.

The only previous attempt by a terrorist group to use a passenger airliner to mount an airborne suicide attack was in December 1994. To punish France for its assistance to the Algerian government and to draw international attention to the Algerian conflict, the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Armée Islamique – GIA) hijacked Air France Airbus A-300 Flight 8969 in Algiers on 24 December 1994. Of the 227 passengers, 40 were French nationals. After the GIA had released some women and children, but murdered three passengers, the Algerian authorities permitted the aircraft to leave for France. The intention of the GIA cell, led by the 25-year-old Abdul Abdallah Yahia, alias Abou, was to crash a fully fuelled plane into the Eiffel Tower in the heart of Paris. The French consulate in Oran, meanwhile, had received an anonymous warning that the ultimate aim was to blow the aircraft up in mid-air over Paris. Further debriefing of the passengers released in Algiers revealed that the four GIA hijackers were carrying explosives on board, had requested and received a wristwatch from a passenger and had discussed ‘martyrdom’."

A New Breed; Al Qaeda and its associates have an unpleasant habit of revisiting their past operations

"In 1994, terrorists who intended to fly an Air France plane into the Eiffel Tower or another target in Paris were thwarted by an uncooperative crew." - MSNBC (07/09/03)

• 1995 - The U.S. was warned of a plot to hijack planes and attack the Pentagon, WTC, CIA headquarters, and other buildings when a terrorist plot known as "Operation Bojinka" was foiled in the Philippines.

U.S. warned in 1995 of plot to hijack planes, attack buildings

"The FBI was warned six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings, Philippine investigators told CNN.

Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

"Murad narrated to us about a plan by the Ramzi cell in the continental U.S. to hijack a commercial plane and ram it into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and also the Pentagon," said Rodolfo Mendoza, a Philippine intelligence investigator.Philippine investigators also found evidence targeting commercial towers in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.They said they passed that information on to the FBI in 1995, but it's not clear what was done with it. " - CNN (09/18/01)

"Also, Philippine investigators said that in 1995 they told the FBI about a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings. Philippine authorities say they learned of that plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center." - CNN (05/18/02)

’96 Hint Of Suicide Hijack Scheming

"The White House dug in for a protracted political battle as new details emerged about a 1999 report to U.S. intelligence that predicted terrorists might try to fly airliners into government buildings. And the FBI learned in 1996 of similar planning by terrorists, according to The New York Times.The Times also says in its Saturday editions that the FBI had been aware for several years that Al Qaeda-linked men were training as pilots in the United States and elsewhere.

The F.B.I. knew by 1996 of a specific threat that terrorists in bin Laden's network might use a plane in a suicide attack against the headquarters of the C.I.A. or another large federal building in the Washington area, law enforcement officials acknowledged to The New York Times.In his 1996 confession, a Pakistani terrorist, Abdul Hakim Murad, said he planned to use the training he received at flight schools in the U.S. to fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., or another federal building, the Times reports.

Murad, who was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and convicted in New York on charges of conspiring to blow up 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific at the same time, received flight training at schools in New York, North Carolina, California and Texas, the Times says.Information from that confession formed a basis for the analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence agencies in 1999 warning that bin Laden-associated terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings such as the Pentagon, the Times adds." - CBS (05/18/02) [Cached]

This Week: Operation Bojinka

"Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Philippine police took down an al Qaeda cell in Manila that, among other things, had been plotting to fly explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon -- and possibly some skyscrapers. The CIA knew about the plot, known as Operation Bojinka. So did the FBI. "We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995," a Philippine inspector says. "Why didn't they pay attention?" - Washington Post (01/02/02)

The Plot; How terrorists hatched a simple plan to use planes as bombs.

"Khalid Mohammed, Yousef and a third plotter, Wali Shah Khan, arrived in the Philippines in early 1994. Khan had stopped en route in Kuala Lumpur, where he and Hambali, the Indonesia patent medicine salesman, incorporated an export company called Konsojaya. Its real purpose, police say now, was to serve as a financial conduit for the plotters.In Manila, the trio acted like anything but Islamic terrorists. All had local girlfriends. They hung out at karaoke bars and strip clubs.Yousef and Mohammed, just weeks before they intended to blow up the pope, went on holiday to a coastal resort, where they took scuba-diving lessons.Yousef's friend Murad joined them just before Christmas. The plans for the airplane plot--which they code-named Bojinka, Serbo-Croatian for explosion--called for men to board flights in Asia that had intermediate stops before heading across the Pacific. They would plant Yousef's bombs on the planes, disembark at the intermediate stop and do the same thing on another flight. The bombs' timers would be set so that all the bombs would go off more or less simultaneously.Yousef did a trial run Dec. 9, planting a small version of his bomb on a Philippine Airlines flight to Tokyo. It exploded, killing one man. It would have caused the plane to crash if not for what were described as heroic efforts by the pilot." - LA Times (09/01/02) [Wayback Machine]

"Oplan Bojinka (also known as Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, Bojinka Plot, Bojinga...) was a planned large-scale attack on airliners in 1995, and was a precursor to the September 11 attacks.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill Pope John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks.

The money handed down to the plotters originated from Al-Qaida, an international Islamic militant organization which was then based in Sudan. Philippine authorities say that Operation Bojinka was developed by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed while they were in Manila, Philippines in 1994 and early 1995.

Phase two would have involved Abdul Hakim Murad either renting, buying, or hijacking a small airplane, preferably a Cessna. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995 stated, "What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters."Another plot the men were cooking up would have involved hijacking of more airplanes. The Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), The Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia), the Washington Capitol (Washington, DC), the White House (Washington, DC), the Transamerica Tower (San Francisco, California), and the World Trade Center (New York, New York) would be the likely targets.

The plot was abandoned after an apartment fire occurred during the night in Manila, Philippines on Friday, January 6, 1995.

The Philippines forwarded details on the Bojinka plot to the United States in April 1995.

All three conspirators got life sentences for participating in the plot. Yousef also got 240 years along with his life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center attacks." - Wikipedia

(See also: 1994 - U.S. intelligence officials had several warnings that terrorists might attack US using airplanes as weapons; July 2001 - U.S. warned that Islamic terrorists might kill Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit)

• 1995 - In a trading-card game called "Illuminati: New World Order" (INWO), a number of the playing cards predict some of the exact same events of 9/11, such as the explosions at the Pentagon and WTC and smoke rising from the Twin Towers with a demon face.

"SMOKING GUN" PROOF THAT ILLUMINATI PLAN TO ATTACK ON 9/11 AND BEYOND WAS WELL KNOWN AS FAR BACK AS 1995!

"In nine pertinent playing cards of the "Illuminati New World Order" Game, how did the inventor know -- in 1995 -- the three events comprising the 9/11 attacks? How did he know also the correct plan in the near future?

"Terrorist Nuke" -- This card is one of the most shocking of all, especially in light of the fact that this game first hit the specialty stores in 1995! How in the world did Steve Jackson know that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were going to be attacked? In fact, this card accurately depicted the World Trade Center attack in great detail. This card accurately depicts several facts of 9/11 -- on cards created all the way back in 1995! The picture accurately depicts:

"Pentagon" -- When I saw this card, immediately after seeing the Twin Tower picture, my blood froze! Unless one had advanced knowledge of the Illuminati Plan, there is no way on earth that they would have been able to create pictures in 1995 that accurately depict the unfolding events of 9/11! The Pentagon is shown on fire; we know that a plane allegedly flew into a section of the Pentagon and nearly burned that section completely. However, the rest of the Pentagon was undamaged to the point where its functions continued unimpeded.

"Population Control" -- Even though the heading on this card says, "Population Reductionl", the scene depicted shows clearly the Twin Towers under attack. With the Twin Towers under attack, and the tops of them hidden by the black smoke, the New York Empire State Building is again the tallest building in the City! Further, notice that the smoke is shaped in the form of a demon's face." - Cutting Edge, Illuminati Card Game

- INWO is the trading-card version of Illuminati, the original game of conspiracy and weirdness from Steve Jackson Games.

"Early Career: The son of President George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush grew up in Midland. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot for the Texas Air National Guard. He began his career in the oil and gas business in Midland in 1975 and worked in the energy industry until 1986. After working on his father’s 1988 presidential campaign he assembled the group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989 and which later built the Ballpark at Arlington. He served as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers until his election as governor.Accomplishments: Bush became known for his ability to work with individuals of both parties in a non-confrontational manner, and thus he was able to please many constituencies in the state. His stance on crime, drugs, and the death penalty, along with large tax cuts and welfare reform with sterner work requirements, endeared him to conservatives. At the same time, Bush promoted substantial state spending on public education and bilingual programs, which pleased many Hispanics and other traditionally Democratic voters. His education measures also included testing as a means of ensuring teacher accountability and educational choice through charter schools. Bush won a smashing reelection victory in 1998.The national Republican party took note and nominated Bush as their presidential candidate in 2000. Following an exceptionally difficult and controversial vote count, Bush became the first governor of Texas to be elected to the nation's highest office." - State of Texas

• April 19, 1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK is bombed (with the same type of bomb used at the '93 WTC bombing) at approximately 9:02 a.m. (about one minute before the time the 2nd plane hits the WTC on 9/11) allegedly by Timothy McVeigh on the second anniversary of the Waco incident in which officials claim McVeigh, by himself, drove up in a Ryder rental truck with a fertilizer bomb inside it to destroy the building, but photos of the scene seem to show no crater in the ground where the Ryder truck was parked, evidence* shows that there were two more bombs found inside the building that would have been more powerful than the truck bomb if they had gone off, witnesses* saw a second person with McVeigh in the Ryder truck, and also to be noted is that all ATF agents* stationed at the building were absent at the time of the attack because they were tipped off about the attack and then later all arrived with full tactical gear on.

"The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist attack against the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, in the street in front of the Murrah building, attackers exploded a rented Ryder truck containing about 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of explosive material. The car bomb was composed of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, a highly volatile motor-racing fuel. Timothy McVeigh was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman within an hour of the explosion. At his trial, the United States Government asserted that the motivation for the attack was to avenge the deaths of Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, whom McVeigh believed had been murdered by agents of the federal government. The attack was staged on the second anniversary of the Waco incident.In all, 168 people were killed in the bombing, which made it the worst terrorist attack on United States soil prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The remains of the half-destroyed Federal building were demolished in May 1995...Some legislation was also introduced in response to the attack, notably the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996." - Wikipedia

"The terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, generated seismic waves that were recorded on two permanent seismographs about 7 and 26 km away from the bombing.The time 9:01:52 a.m. is probably the earliest that the bomb could have detonated. The exact time of the bombing is uncertain because of ambiguities about which part of the potential seismic sources on April 19 and May 23 generated the wave trains.On the preceding basis, we conclude that the bomb was detonated sometime between 9:01:52 and 9:01:57 a.m. LT. We prefer 9:01:57 a.m. as the time of the bombing..." - American Geophysical Union (10/08/96)

"Nichols also repeatedly called a boarding house in Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef. The same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in New York and in Oklahoma City.Nichols also repeatedly called a boarding house in Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef. The same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in New York and in Oklahoma City." - FOX News (04/17/05)

"John Hawkins: You've caught a lot of heat for a couple of quotes you made. You also said in an interview with the New York Observer, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." Do you stand by those quotes or do you think that perhaps you should have phrased them differently?Ann Coulter: Of course I regret it. I should have added, "after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters." - RightWingNews.com

• June 21, 1995 - President Clinton signs PDD-39, a counterterrorism directive that puts the FBI in charge of any terrorism investigation.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Efforts to Improve the Sharing of Intelligence and Other Information

"Following the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, the President issued Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 39, which directs responsible federal agencies to take various measures aimed at: 1) reducing vulnerabilities to terrorism, 2) deterring and responding to terrorism, and 3) preventing and managing the consequences of terrorist uses of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The FBI specifically is tasked with reducing the United States’ vulnerability to terrorism through an expanded program of counterterrorism. PDD 39 also requires the FBI Director to ensure that the FBI’s counterterrorism capabilities are well managed, funded, and exercised." - Dept of Justice

PDD-39 U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism

"The Director, FBI, as head of the investigative agency for terrorism, shall reduce vulnerabilities by an expanded program of counterterrorism" - fas.org

Presidential Decision Directive 39"Purpose. To provide an unclassified synopsis of the U.S. national policy on terrorism as laid out in Presidential Decision Directive-39 (PDD-39).Background. On June 21, 1995, the President signed PDD-39, U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism. This classified document laid out the national policy and assigned specific missions to designated Federal Departments and agencies. This unclassified synopsis is provided to enable Federal, State, and local emergency response and Consequence Management personnel without appropriate security clearances to have a basic understanding of the provisions of PDD-39.PDD-39 validates and reaffirms existing Federal Lead Agency responsibilities for counterterrorism, which are assigned to the Department of Justice (DOJ), as delegated to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for threats or acts of terrorism within the United States. The FBI as the lead for Crisis Management will involve only those Federal agencies required and designated in classified documents. The Directive further states that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with the support of all agencies in the Federal Response Plan (FRP), will support the FBI in Washington, DC, and on scene until the Attorney General transfers Lead Agency to FEMA. FEMA retains responsibility for Consequence Management throughout the Federal response." - Dept of Justice

"Halliburton Company (NYSE-HAL) today named former Secretary of Defense Richard B. (Dick) Cheney president and chief executive officer of the company effective October 1, 1995. Cheney, who is in the process of relocating to Dallas, joins the Halliburton Company board of directors immediately. Cheney, 54, will succeed Thomas H. Cruikshank as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

Cheney is currently a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and serves as a director of a number of companies, including Procter and Gamble and TRW Inc.

In nearly four years as Secretary of Defense (March 1989 to January 1993) Cheney was responsible for shaping the future of the U.S. military in an age of profound and rapid change in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world. He directed the nation's largest military campaigns in recent history -- Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm from August 1990 through most of 1991. In recognition of his leadership in the Gulf War, President Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom in July 1991.

Halliburton Company is one of the world's largest diversified energy services, engineering, maintenance, and construction companies. Founded in 1919, Halliburton provides a broad range of energy services and products, industrial and marine engineering and construction services, and property and casualty insurance services." - Business Wire/High Beam (08/10/95)

Democrats want Cheney-Halliburton probe

"A Democratic senator Tuesday called for a congressional investigation into whether Vice President Dick Cheney had a role in awarding a no-bid contract in Iraq to his old company, the oil-services giant Halliburton.

Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he became George Bush's running mate." - CNN (06/01/04)

"Cheney retired from the company during the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign with a severance package worth $20 million.Cheney's deferred compensation from Halliburton, which appeared on his 2001 financial disclosure statement, generated an income between $50,000 to $100,000. Cheney also retains 433,000 share-equivalent unexercised stock options at Halliburton.On the question of Cheney's deferred compensation from Halliburton, officials of the Bush-Cheney campaign said that before entering office in 2001, Cheney bought an insurance policy that guaranteed a fixed amount of deferred payments from Halliburton each year for five years so that the payments would not depend on the company's fortunes. The officials also said he had promised to donate to charity any after-tax profits he made from exercising his stock options. These steps are not unusual for corporate executives who enter government." - Wikipedia

• November 26, 1995 - In the Simpson's episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" (which includes Rupert Murdoch shown as a convict), Sideshow Bob attempts to kill Crusty the Clown by flying an airplane and crashing it into Crusty's hideout.

"Sideshow Bob hates television. As a prisoner, his fellow convicts (including Rupert Murdoch) watch it constantly. When Vanessa Redgrave gets her own tasteless sitcom on FOX, it is the last straw. He escapes custody, steals a bomb, and hides out in a blimp. When he threatens to detonate a bomb, the town gives in to his only demand and ceases production of all television shows. The Simpsons just happen to be at the airshow, close to the blimp. The airshow evacuates, but Bart and Lisa stay in the military base. They find Sideshow Bob and tip off the cops as to his whereabouts. Krusty manages to get back on television by broadcasting from a shack, and Sideshow Bob detonates the bomb. The bomb is a dud. He escapes in the Wright brothers plane with Bart as his hostage, heading toward Krusty's shack on a kamikaze mission. Fortunately television is saved when this plan fails." - TV Tome [See video clip: youtube]

• 1996 - U.S. officials had considered the possibility that a plane could be flown into the main stadium at the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

On 9/11, U.S. radar was facing wrong way

"Commission members, meanwhile, posed pointed questions to McKinley, Arnold and Mineta , suggesting NORAD and transportation officials should have been aware of the possibility that hijacked jets could be flown into targets.Members cited an array of previously known incidents, including a failed mid-1990s terrorist plan to fly an Air France plane into the Eiffel Tower, a 1996 plot to hijack a Japanese airliner and crash it in Tel Aviv and even a 1998 threat that unidentified Arabs might try to slam an explosives-laden plane into the World Trade Center.Members also noted that a small plane had crashed on the South Lawn of the White House in 1994 and U.S. officials had considered the possibility that a plane could be flown into the main stadium during planning for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.But NORAD and transportation officials continued to insist that they were never apprised by the nation's intelligence community of the potential for a U.S. jetliner to be used in such a way." - Star-Ledger/NJ.com (05/24/03) [Archived: WayBack Machine]

(See also: 1998-99 - Federal Report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government buildings; 1999 - NORAD starts conducting exercises in which airplanes are hijacked and crashed into targets which include the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; April 2001 - NORAD planned an exercise about a hijacked plane crash into the Pentagon, but was rejected)

• 1996 - Plan to Capture Bin Laden Before 9/11 Was Called Off By Janet Reno.

"The FBI made secret plans to capture and arrest Osama bin Laden five years ago, long before the terror leader's deadliest plan came to fruition.Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who is now an ABCNEWS consultant, said that federal agents seeking bin Laden had developed a plan to have a plane fly in and attack a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the terror leader was believed to have been holed up back in 1998 — three years before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.But when the plan went up the chain of command for approval, it was killed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno."They came to the decision that this plan was probably too dangerous, that the loss of life on the ground would have been significant," Cloonan said. There was concern that people around the bin Laden compound would be killed."Starting in early 1996, a team of FBI and CIA agents was secretly sent to an unmarked office in a nondescript building off the Beltway in Alexandria, Va. It was called Alex Station, and it was the center of a U.S. government operation to capture bin Laden.The former attorney general declined to comment to ABCNEWS' Good Morning America, saying the incident was classified.Cloonan says Reno's decision to kill the plan was never reopened." - ABC (05/21/02)

• April 3, 1996 - U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, who was under investigation for financial improprieties, is killed along with several other top executives and government employees in a suspicious plane crash involving a military Boeing 737 that crashed into a hill in Croatia in which later an Air Force medical examiner involved with the case says x-rays of Mr. Brown's skull shows evidence of a shot gun blast to his head.

"At least four bodies were found Wednesday night in a mountainous area near the Croatian coast after the crash of a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and at least one other official on a flight from Tuzla, Croatian officials reported.

President Franjo Tudjman told CNN that the Air Force T-43A, the military version of a Boeing 737, hit St. John's mountain near the coastal town of Cavtat, about 10 miles southeast of Dubrovnik. "She crashed on a hill," he said.Brown, 54, was on a business development trip in the former Yugoslavia and was traveling with about 12 top executives from energy, banking, aircraft, construction and other companies.

Early crash reports differedAn airport official in Dubrovnik said Brown's plane disappeared from radar screens and lost radio contact at 7:50 a.m. EST (1250 GMT), about 5 minutes before it was due to land. The official said weather conditions were windy and rainy, but not unusual for the area.Initially, the White House said it was told the plane went down in the Adriatic Sea. Later, the officials said wreckage was spread over a wide area. The White House then confirmed that some of the wreckage was on land and some in the water, leading to the initial confusion over the crash site.A Defense Department source said there were 27 passengers aboard the plane, plus the crew. Of the 27, 13 or 14 were thought to be government employees with the rest in private industry. Defense officials said the plane normally would have a crew of five or six for VIP travel." - CNN (04/03/96)

Brown hoped to share U.S. economic strength with Balkans

"The trip started in France with a meeting of the G-7, involving trade ministers from the seven top industrialized nations. But it moved into high gear when the Commerce Secretary arrived in Tuzla, where he met with American GIs serving in Bosnia.He was accompanied by a group of chief executive officers of major U.S. companies who agreed to help restore Bosnia's buildings, its water and energy systems, its tourism, and even it banking system.

Aides at the Commerce Department say the secretary planned to help get up to $5 billion in contracts for American companies from a special international fund created by the Dayton peace accords.Twelve executives were scheduled to go with Brown, but several didn't make the trip; among them, the chief of the Virginia high-tech defense firm Dyncorp. CEO Daniel Bannister's company just won an $18 million contract to provide support for the U.N.'s civilian police mission in Bosnia." - CNN (04/03/96)

Independent Counsel: No Conclusions On Brown Probe

"The independent counsel who investigated the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown before he died in a plane crash reached no conclusions on whether Brown violated any laws.The final report by independent counsel Daniel Pearson, released today in federal court, says, "My office's investigation of Secretary Brown ended unfinished with his death."Pearson closed his investigation of Brown shortly after the plane crash, but handed the investigation of Hill and other Brown associates back to the Justice Department." - CNN (11/14/06)

Was Ron Brown assassinated?

"Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell, a medical doctor, forensic pathologist and deputy medical examiner with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, has released photos and x-rays which purport to show that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown had a gunshot wound in his head following his airplane crash in Croatia last year.Cogswell was involved in the investigation of the April 1996 crash of the Air Force plane that carried Brown and 34 others on a trade mission. He says evidence that the Cabinet official was murdered has been ignored.No autopsy was performed on Brown, though Cogswell urged that the procedure be conducted." - WorldNetDaily (12/10/97)

• April 28, 1996 - Former CIA Director William Colby, who was replaced in 1976 with George Bush Sr. by President Gerald Ford, is reported missing after Kay Griggs comes to him to whistle blow illegal activities and corruption involved with the highest levels of the military that she learned first hand from her husband who was a Marine Colonel and Chief of Staff, as well as head of NATO's Psychological Operations.

"Search crews are combing the muddy waters of the Wicomico River and helicopters are scouring the area in a search for former CIA director William Colby.Colby, 76, the CIA's chief spy in Saigon during the Vietnam War and the agency's director in the mid-1970s, was reported missing by neighbors after his canoe was found filled with water about a quarter mile from his vacation home.No foul play was suspected, but an investigation is ongoing, Charles County Sheriff Fred Davis said.Authorities believe Colby went canoeing Saturday evening on the Wicomico River, directly across from Cobb Island in southern Maryland.Petty Officer Dye said it looked as though Colby had not planned on being gone long."There were still dinner items on the table," he said.Neighbors became suspicious of Colby's whereabouts after noticing his car still in the driveway late Sunday. Typically, Colby would have returned to Washington by then, the neighbors told authorities. Then, the canoe was discovered to be missing.Colby began his intelligence career parachuting into France to fight Nazis. He joined the CIA in 1950 and headed the spy agency's Saigon office during the Vietnam War. He was CIA director from 1973 to 1976 under Presidents Nixon and Ford.He was dismissed by Ford because of a growing feeling in the White House that he was cooperating too freely with congressional investigators looking into allegations of CIA wrongdoing.Since his retirement from the agency, Colby has served as a Washington lawyer and consultant." - CNN (04/29/96)

"Katharine ‘Kay’ Griggs knows what it’s like to have a gun pointed in her face. She knows what it’s like to have her face slapped, her bones broken and her nose bloodied by her former bully of a husband, an active Marine Colonel and a man who she claims is “above the law and literally gets away with murder.”But the real story for public consumption isn’t the private divorce court details. It is the secret military information about drug running, weapon sales, sexual perversion and assassination squads she learned firsthand from her husband, U.S. Marine Corps Col. George Raymond Griggs...During the final two years of the marriage, Griggs said her husband basically disappeared. When she finally decided to blow the whistle on her husband’s activities and others surrounding him, she met privately with attorney and former CIA Director William Colby, seeking advice.‘I really thought I would get some help, but Colby was later found dead,” said Griggs about Colby whose body was found eight weeks after he disappeared on April, 27, 1996, while canoeing near his Rock Point, Maryland, vacation home." - Arctic Beacon (07/25/05)

"Kay Griggs was a Southern divorcee who rented a room to Marine Corps colonel George Griggs in the late 1980s. She was impressed by his clipped manner, his education, his good looks. Two months later she married him. What she found out about world affairs as George Griggs' wife was astounding.Colonel Griggs was a Marine Corps Chief of Staff, as well as head of NATO's Psychological Operations. He was also, his wife realized, entirely mind-controlled. Kay, a self-declared Christian, became privy to the real workings of the United States military, leadership training, drug-running and weapons sales, and the secret worldwide camps that train professional assassins." - kaygriggstalks.com

• May 6, 1996 - The body of former CIA Director William Colby is recovered about 20 yards from where his capsized, half-submerged canoe was found eight days earlier.

"The body of former CIA Director William Colby was recovered Monday morning about 20 yards from where his capsized, half-submerged canoe was found eight days ago, the Charles County Sheriff's Department said.The body was discovered about 8 a.m. EST by searchers from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources who were patrolling the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac River.Colby's body was identified by his wife, Sally Shelton-Colby. Last week, she said she hoped her husband would be found, injured and awaiting rescue.Authorities said they believe Colby's body had been submerged where it was found, and it only recently rose to the surface, CNN Producer Gavin Thomas reported from the scene.Colby, 76, was director of the CIA in the 1970s. He was reported missing after he went canoeing in front of his vacation home in southern Maryland on April 27." - CNN (05/05/96)

"William Colby led the Central Intelligence Agency through some of its most turbulent days during the 1970s. He worked behind enemy lines in wartime France and, most recently, with a former Cold War adversary on a computer game.Colby had a long history with secret intelligence. He headed the CIA's Saigon station from 1959 to 1962. In 1968, he returned to Vietnam to run the "Pacification Program." The program, run during the late 1960s, included Operation Phoenix, which aimed at rooting out Viet Cong agents. More than 20,000 Viet Cong were killed while Colby was in charge.Later, he would tell a House panel there might have been some "illegal killing," as he called it. Nearly 20 years after the war ended, Vietnam refused to let him visit.After President Nixon put him in charge of the CIA in 1973, Colby spent a fair amount of time testifying before congressional committees. Colby insisted the agency did not support or bring about the 1973 coup against Chile's President Salvador Allende, even though the Nixon administration had budgeted millions of dollars to destabilize Allende's left-wing government.But some people in the Ford administration had a problem with how often Colby cooperated with Congress. For example, he gave Congress a list of past CIA actions that were unethical, unauthorized, or immoral. They included plans to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro and other international leaders; unauthorized perusal of Americans' mail, and psychedelic drug experiments conducted without the consent of the Americans being tested. In late 1975, President Ford announced that George Bush would replace him." - CNN (05/06/96)

"William Egan ColbyTENURE AS DIRECTOR 4 September 1973–30 January 1976APPOINTED 10 May 1973 by President Richard M. Nixon; confirmed by Senate, 1 August 1973; sworn in, 4 September 1973LATER CAREER Private law practice, consultant, and author; Died 27 April 1996" - CIA

"Unocal Corporation and Delta Oil Company of Saudi Arabia said today they had signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's Turkmenrusgaz as important additions to the consortium that plans to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.The proposed pipeline would stretch nearly 900 miles from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad field, across Afghanistan, to central Pakistan with an expected throughput of up to 2.0 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas per day. Cost is estimated at about $2 billion.Unocal had signed an agreement with the government of Turkmenistan in October 1995 giving Unocal the right to buy natural gas from specific, certified and dedicated reserves in Turkmenistan, transport it to Pakistan, and market it. The gas project would encompass construction of a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and development of marketing outlets in Pakistan." - Unocal (08/13/96)

(See also: 1997 - Taleban in Texas for talks with Unocal on oil pipeline through Afghanistan)

• 1997 - Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor and follow up novel Executive Orders depicts a terrorists hijacking a plane and suicide bombing it into the Capital building obliterating the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

Debt of Honor (July 1997) - "Razio Yamata is one of Japan's most influential industrialists, and part of a relatively small group of authority who wield tremendous authority in the Pacific Rim's economic powerhouse. He has devised a plan to cripple the American greatness, humble the U.S. military, and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage." - Amazon.com

Executive Orders (Aug 1997) - "Tom Clancy goes to the White House in this thriller of political terror and global disaster. The American political situation takes a disturbing turn as the President, Congress, and Supreme Court are obliterated when a Japanese terrorist lands a 747 on the Capitol." - Amazon.com

"JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What we see now is nothing less than the worst nightmare that one could imagine come to life, probably worse than anyone could have imagined. You may remember that Tom Clancy wrote a novel that ends with a terrorist hijacker crashing into the Capitol." - CNN (09/11/01)

• 1997 - The Taleban are in Texas for talks with U.S. oil giant Unocal on an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.

"A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.In May, Taleban-controlled radio in Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinian company had announced that pipeline construction would start "soon".The radio has reported several visits to Kabul by Unocal and Bridas company officials over the past few months.A BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea." - BBC (12/04/97)

(See also: August 13, 1996 - Unocal and Delta Oil plan to build a gas pipeline through Afghanistan; February 12, 1998 - Unocal rep testifies before congress that an Afghan pipeline can't happen without a single government there; August 21, 1998 - Unocal suspends all activities related to proposed pipeline through Afghanistan)

• 1997 - Assistant director of the FBI and an expert on terrorism John O'Neill forecasts the possibility of an organized attack and said that terrorists were already operating in the U.S.

"While with the FBI, O'Neill led major investigations of Osama bin Laden, a suspect in this week's attacks, which also targeted the Pentagon. In 1997, he forecast the possibility of an organized attack and said that terrorists were already operating in this country."A lot of these groups now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to," O'Neill said in reports published in 1997. He also said that his appointment to the New York FBI office as a counterterrorism expert did not signal that the government expected more attacks here." - Newsday (09/14/01)

(See also: August 2001 - John O'Neill becomes chief of security at the WTC; September 10, 2001 - John O'Neill starts his first day of work at the WTC; 9/11 - John O'Neill is feared dead on his second day on the job at the WTC; September 21, 2001 - The body of John O'Neill is recovered from the WTC)

• 1997 - In his book, The Grand Chessboard, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski (former national security advisor for President Carter, former director of the Council on Foreign Relations,and a member of the Trilateral Commission along with Bush Sr. and Dick Cheney) writes of an imperialistic endeavor of controlling the world's vast natural resources (oil, natural gas, minerals, gold, etc.) and also human labor in Eurasia (specifically central Asia/Uzbekistan) that the U.S. must undertake to maintain global domination despite the American public's indecisiveness towards the external projection of American power (in which he reminds the reader that the American public supported U.S.'s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) and cautions that it will become more difficult to establish consensus on foreign policy issues with an ever increasingly multi-cultural society in America unless the public widely perceives a massive direct external threat.

"...The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power... (p. xiii)"... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical...A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization." (p.35)"Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above..."æ (p. 40)"...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)"Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)"Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." (p. 121)"Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (p.124) [Emphasis added]"The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." (p.125)"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia." (p.130)"Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan's truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country's people. (p.132)"In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control." (p. 133)."For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan - and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan - and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)"Turkmenistan... has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea..." (p.145)"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (p148)"China's growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area's independence are also congruent with America's interests." (p.149)"America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)"Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally." (p.194)"With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design." (p.197)"That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last." (p.209)"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211) [Emphasis added] - Excerpts posted from: From The Wilderness

"Zbigniew Brzezinski played an important role in the formation of the Commission. He was its first Director (1973-76) and its major intellectual dynamo in those years. Dr. Brzezinski rejoined the Commission in 1981 and now serves on the Executive Committee. President Carter was a member from mid-1973 until his election, when he left in accordance with Commission rules barring individuals holding administration posts. President Bush was invited to join in early 1977 after he left the government. He resigned in late 1978, two years before he became Vice President. Richard B. Cheney was a Commission member from 1997 until he became a candidate for the Vice Presidency and resigned in 2000." - Trilateral Commission

"Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, is run by President Islam Karimov. Its largely Muslim Turkic people are impoverished and the government is corrupt, repressive and not very good at getting things done (except for the repressing).American interest in Uzbekistan increased sharply after 9/11 and Karimov became an ally of the United States in the face of a common enemy, Islamist terrorists. The facilities Karimov provided proved very useful in the war against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. The U.S. military presence continues in Uzbekistan." - Washington Times/UPI (11/17/03)

"This group and its leader -- a person named Osama bin Laden -- are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan," said Bush. - White House (09/20/01)

"Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in hand and changed -- ever so slightly -- the Warren Commission's key sentence on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was killed in Dallas.The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Gov. John Connally -- a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.A small change, said Ford yesterday when it came to light, one intended to clarify meaning, not alter history."My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory," he said in a telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. "My changes were only an attempt to be more precise."But still, his editing was seized upon by members of the conspiracy community, which rejects the commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone."This is the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report," said Robert D. Morningstar, a computer systems specialist in New York City who said he has studied the assassination since it occurred and written an Internet book about it.The effect of Ford's editing, Morningstar said, was to suggest that a bullet struck Kennedy in the neck, "raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins."The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that a single bullet -- fired by a "discontented" Oswald -- passed through Kennedy's body and wounded his fellow motorcade passenger, Connally, and that a second, fatal bullet, fired from the same place, tore through Kennedy's head.The assassination of the president occurred Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas; Oswald was arrested that day but was shot and killed two days later as he was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail.Conspiracy theorists reject the idea that a single bullet could have hit both Kennedy and Connally and done such damage. Thus they argue that a second gunman must have been involved.Ford's changes tend to support the single-bullet theory by making a specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body "at the back of his neck" rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff originally wrote.Ford's handwritten notes were contained in 40,000 pages of records kept by J. Lee Rankin, chief counsel of the Warren Commission.They were made public yesterday by the Assassination Record Review Board, an agency created by Congress to amass all relevant evidence in the case. The documents will be available to the public in the National Archives.The staff of the commission had written: "A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine."Ford suggested changing that to read: "A bullet had entered the back of his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine."The final report said: "A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."Ford, then House Republican leader and later elevated to the presidency with the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon, is the sole surviving member of the seven-member commission chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren.In the interview, he recalled making the change, but said that clarity, not conspiracy, was the purpose.He said he supposed the commission's overriding conclusion -- that Oswald acted alone -- would always be challenged, but "I think our judgments have stood the test of time." - South Coast Today/AP (07/03/97)

• August 1997 - On the cover of FEMA's "Emergency Response to Terrorism" self-study course booklet is a picture of the WTC with a gun scope's cross-hairs aimed at the one of the towers.

• September 11, 1997 - Stratesec, Inc, a security firm where George H.W. Bush's son Marvin is a board member and who's contracted with the WTC, Dulles Airport, United Airlines, Los Alamos National Laboratories, goes public.

TRIMMING THE BUSHES; Family Business at the Watergate

"Stratesec was founded as Securacom (formerly the engineering firm Burns and Roe Securacom).

Marvin Bush was reelected to the Stratesec board of directors annually from 1993 through 1999. His last reelection was on May 25, 1999, for July 1999 to June 2000.The company described itself this way: "Stratesec, Incorporated, is a fully integrated single source security systems company. The company provides consulting and planning, engineering and design, systems integration, and maintenance and technical support services to commercial and government clients worldwide. Stratesec has completed security projects for airports, corporations, utilities, prisons, universities, and federal, state and local governments."When Securacom went public on September 11, 1997, its prospectus for the Initial Public Offering prominently featured photographs of its clients the World Trade Center and Dulles airport, with a client list that included United Airlines and Los Alamos National Laboratories." - Washington Spectator (02/15/05)

• 1998 - U.S. intelligence had information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosives-laden airplane into the WTC and attack Washington D.C., officials say the planning for 9/11 began.

Prior hints of September 11-type attack

"As early as 1998, intelligence sources told TIME magazine they had evidence that bin Laden might be planning a strike on New York or Washington in retaliation for a U.S. missile strike against al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a factory suspected of making chemical weapons components in Sudan.

Then, in September 1999, came the interagency government report --- titled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why" -- that referenced bin Laden's terrorist network, al Qaeda, and its potential involvement in such a plot." - CNN (05/18/02)

Officials: Sept. 11 attacks were planned since 1998

"Al-Qaeda spent three years planning the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, methodically selecting targets and recruiting skilled participants and "muscle" to hijack the jets, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials told lawmakers Tuesday. In a closed session held in a secure room of the U.S. Capitol, a House-Senate investigative panel for the first time heard the chiefs of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency detail the elaborate terrorist plot and "several of the areas in which we missed" clues pointing to it, according to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla. "There were lapses, in my judgment, by all three agencies," Graham said.

CIA Director George Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the NSA chief, described how al-Qaeda began planning the Sept. 11 attacks in 1998, recruited the participants and maintained secrecy." - USA Today (06/18/02)

"In 1998, U.S. intelligence had information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosives-laden airplane into the World Trade Center, according to a joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees." - CNN (09/19/02)

"Even though Bush has refused to make parts of the 9-11 report public, one thing is startlingly clear: The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks—and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington—for several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming.See for yourself. The report lists 36 different summaries of warnings dating back to 1997. Among them:"In September 1998, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information that Bin Laden's next operation might involve flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and detonating it.""In the fall of 1998, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information concerning a Bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas.""In March 2000, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information regarding the types of targets that operatives of Bin Laden's network might strike. The Statue of Liberty was specifically mentioned, as were skyscrapers, ports, airports, and nuclear power plans."Maybe the Bush team dismissed warning signals as the discoveries of an overly hyped up Clinton team. But John Dean, a White House counsel under Nixon who has become a guide to deciphering reports on 9/11, says this is unlikely. Condi Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, "stated in a May 16, 2002, press briefing that, on August 6, 2001, the President Daily Brief (PDB) included information about Bin Laden's methods of operation from a historical perspective dating back to 1997."Rice also said at this briefing that the PDB pointed out that Bin Laden might hijack an airline and take hostages to gain release of one of their operatives. She said the warning was "generalized"—no date, place, or method.As Dean notes, how could Rice, having known all this, say that the administration had no idea "these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon"?"In sum, the 9-11 Report of the Congressional Inquiry indicates that the intelligence community was very aware that Bin Laden might fly an airplane into an American skyscraper," says Dean. "Given the fact that there had already been an attempt to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center with a bomb, how could Rice say what she did?"We don't know because Bush has invoked executive privilege to withhold from Congress this key briefing on August 6, 2001. - Village Voice (07/31/03)

(See also: 1996 - U.S. officials considered possibility a plane could be flown into the main stadium at Olympics in Atlanta; 1999 - NORAD starts conducting exercises in which airplanes are hijacked and crashed into targets which include the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; April 2001 - NORAD planned an exercise about a hijacked plane crash into the Pentagon, but was rejected; May 16, 2002 - Condoleezza Rice said she didn't think anybody could have predicted that terrorists would hijack planes and use them as missiles)

"Former US President Bill Clinton has admitted his administration tried to assassinate Osama Bin Laden in 1998 - but failed because it could not find him.The move followed the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa which Bin Laden - the chief suspect in the US terrorist attacks - was suspected of masterminding."I authorised the arrest, and, if necessary, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it - and they were unsuccessful," Mr Clinton told a news conference in New York." - BBC (09/23/01)

• January 26, 1998 - The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a conservative think-tank group, sends President Clinton a letter recommending U.S. military action to get Saddam Hussein out of power saying among other things that he's a threat to Israel and a "significant portion of the world’s supply of oil", says American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a "misguided insistence on unanimity" in the UN Security Council, and of the 18 PNAC members who signed the letter, 10 will be in the 2001 Bush administration.

"The group, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."That event came on Sept. 11, 2001. By that time, Cheney was vice president, Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, and Wolfowitz his deputy at the Pentagon.The next morning — before it was even clear who was behind the attacks — Rumsfeld insisted at a Cabinet meeting that Saddam's Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round of terrorism," according to Bob Woodward's book Bush At War."The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power," they wrote, foreshadowing the debate currently under way in the United Nations.Of the 18 people who signed the letter, 10 are now in the Bush administration. As well as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they include Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; John Bolton, who is undersecretary of state for disarmament; and Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition. Other signatories include William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, and Richard Perle, chairman of the advisory Defense Science Board."Before 9/11, this group ... could not win over the president to this extravagant image of what foreign policy required," said Ian Lustick, a Middle East expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "After 9/11, it was able to benefit from the gigantic eruption of political capital, combined with the supply of military preponderance in the hands of the president. And this small group, therefore, was able to gain direct contact and even control, now, of the White House." - ABC (03/10/03) [Reprinted at: WayBack Machine]

"Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council." - PNAC (01/26/98)

(See also: September 2000 PNAC advocates major US military budget increases, but won't think it will happen without a catastrophic event like a 'new Pearl Harbor')

• February 12, 1998 - In a U.S. congressional hearing, a Unocal representative testifies that a gas pipeline through Afghanistan can't happen until there is a single internationally recognized stable government there, a pipeline through there has significant U.S. commercial interests, and urges the U.S. Government to use its influence to help find solutions to "all of the region's conflicts."

U.S. INTERESTS IN THE CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS

"HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESSFEBRUARY 12, 1998

The Subcommittee is fortunate to have an outstanding panel of witnesses today.

Mr. John Maresca is vice president of international relations for Unocal Corporation, one of the world's largest energy resource development companies. Prior to his Unocal service, Mr. Maresca enjoyed a successful diplomatic career, having served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as minister in our U.S. embassy in France.STATEMENT OF JOHN J. MARESCA, VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Unocal CORPORATIONMr. MARESCA. ...I am John Maresca, vice president for international relations of the Unocal Corporation. Unocal, as you know, is one of the world's leading energy resource and project development companies... I believe these hearings are important and timely. I congratulate you for focusing on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy.I would like to focus today on three issues. First, the need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and gas resources. Second, the need for U.S. support for international and regional efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political settlements to the conflicts in the region, including Afghanistan. Third, the need for structured assistance to encourage economic reforms and the development of appropriate investment climates in the region. In this regard, we specifically support repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.Mr. Chairman, the Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves.One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets where they are needed. Central Asia is isolated. Their natural resources are landlocked, both geographically and politically... In addition, a chief technical obstacle which we in the industry face in transporting oil is the region's existing pipeline infrastructure.At Unocal, we believe that the central factor in planning these pipelines should be the location of the future energy markets that are most likely to need these new supplies.The second option is to build a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.Unocal foresees a pipeline which would become part of a regional system that will gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The 1,040-mile long oil pipeline would extend south through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast. This 42-inch diameter pipeline will have a shipping capacity of one million barrels of oil per day.Last October, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Consortium, called CentGas, in which Unocal holds an interest, was formed to develop a gas pipeline which will link Turkmenistan's vast Dauletabad gas field with markets in Pakistan and possibly India. The proposed 790-mile pipeline will open up new markets for this gas, traveling from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Multan in Pakistan. The proposed extension would move gas on to New Delhi, where it would connect with an existing pipeline. As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place.The Central Asia and Caspian region is blessed with abundant oil and gas that can enhance the lives of the region's residents, and provide energy for growth in both Europe and Asia. The impact of these resources on U.S. commercial interests and U.S. foreign policy is also significant. Without peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the region, cross-border oil and gas pipelines are not likely to be built. We urge the Administration and the Congress to give strong support to the U.N.-led peace process in Afghanistan. The U.S. Government should use its influence to help find solutions to all of the region's conflicts.U.S. assistance in developing these new economies will be crucial to business success. We thus also encourage strong technical assistance programs throughout the region. Specifically, we urge repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. This section unfairly restricts U.S. Government assistance to the government of Azerbaijan and limits U.S. influence in the region.Mr. BEREUTER. ...I would like to turn now to Mr. Maresca...Given the long history of violence in Afghanistan, can Unocal reasonably expect a pipeline to remain secure?The second thing I would ask is, if in fact the political and economic, mostly political problems are solved in Central Asia, how quickly do you think that the exportable oil resources would overwhelm the capacity of one pipeline? Is this something that all of a sudden when the keys are turned, we're going to have a huge amount of exportable oil and gas?Mr. MARESCA. First, on the question about Afghanistan, of course we're not in a phase where we are negotiating on a contract because there is no recognized government really to negotiate with. However, we have had talks and briefings with all the factions. It is clear that they all understand the significance for their country of this pipeline project, and they all support it, all of them. They all want it. They would like it to start tomorrow. All of the factions would like it to start tomorrow if we could do it.Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Maresca, if I could just interrupt here. Why wouldn't you have the situation whereby whoever is in power drawing resources from that pipeline would find that their adversaries would decide to damage their resource base and stop the flow?Mr. MARESCA. It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan Government. That's the simple answer.Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am reminded of a joke where God is asked when peace will come to the Middle East. He says, ''Not in my lifetime.'' I am afraid that this may well be true of Afghanistan as well. In fact, I am more hopeful right now, having just returned from one trip to the Middle East and another trip to Central Asia that there is a greater chance for peace between Israel and its neighbors than there is for peace in Afghanistan. And I know Afghanistan probably better than anyone else in the Congress. I hate to tell you that.Mr. ROHRABACHER. The current government of Afghanistan or the current group of people who hold Kabul, I guess is the best way to say that, and about 60 percent of the country are known as the Taliban. What type of relationship does your company have to the Taliban?Mr. MARESCA. We have the same relationship as we have with the other factions, which is that we have talked with them, we have briefed them, we have invited them to our headquarters to see what our projects are.Mr. ROHRABACHER. However, the Taliban, who are now in control of 60 percent of Afghanistan, could you give me an estimate of where the opium that's being produced in Afghanistan is being produced? Is it in the Taliban areas or is it in the northern areas of Afghanistan?Mr. MARESCA. I can't tell you precisely, but I think it's being produced all over Afghanistan.Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes. To be precise, it's being produced in the Taliban areas. You are talking to someone who has studied it. Whether there is some minor amount of heroin and opium being produced in the other areas is debatable. There is some obviously being produced everywhere, but the major fields that are being produced are in the Taliban-controlled areas.What about the haven for international terrorists? There is a Saudi terrorist who is infamous for financing terrorism around the world. Is he in the Taliban area or is he up there with the northern people?Mr. MARESCA. If it is the person I am thinking of, he is there in the Taliban area.Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, it's one thing to say nobody has a clean civil rights record or human rights record and then just to ignore the fact that half of the people you are talking about totally obliterate the human rights of half of the population. I mean in the non-Taliban areas, there are some violations of human rights, but it's sort of spread out, and in the Taliban areas, half of the population—that's women—have no rights at all.That has to be a factor, doesn't it? The fact that half of the population of Afghanistan is being treated now like they have no rights at all and being oppressed so brutally? Doesn't that have to be part of the equation? You can't just say these are moral equivalents, because they are both bad. Isn't one worse because of that?Mr. MARESCA. Congressman, I am not here to defend the Taliban. That is not my role. We are a company that is trying to build a pipeline across this country.Mr. ROHRABACHER. I sympathize with that. By the way, you are right. All factions agree that the pipeline will be something that's good. But let me warn you that if the pipeline is constructed before there is a government that is acceptable at a general level to the population of Afghanistan and not just to international, other international entities, other governments, that your pipeline will be blown up. There is no doubt about that.Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me just note for the record, although I am being a little adversarial here, that the pipeline would be a tremendous asset to the people of Afghanistan, as it will be a tremendous asset to the region. As I say, most people recognize that. But the pipeline is not independent of everything that's going on in Afghanistan obviously.Mr. MARESCA. I agree 100 percent." - U.S. House of Representatives (02/12/98)

"Dozens of victims and survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing plan to file a $3.2 billion lawsuit against five federal agencies for their alleged negligence in not preventing the attack, their attorney said.The lawsuit will contend that the federal government, through informants, should have had enough notice to take more security measures that could have prevented the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.The FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; General Services Administration; U.S. Marshal's Service; and Federal Protective Service will be named as defendants in the suit, and the $3.2 billion damage claim would give about $20 million to each of the 170 plaintiffs." - CNN (05/07/98)

• August 1998 - United States launches a missile attack against Osama Bin Laden for his alleged masterminding of the two East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings.

"...[Osama] bin Laden, indicted in the United States on charges of masterminding the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in EastAfrica in 1998 that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.After the attacks in East Africa, Washington retaliated with a blistering missile attack in August 1998, sending more than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles into eastern Afghanistan apparently targeting training camps operated by bin Laden.The attacks killed about 20 followers of bin Laden's but the exiled Saudi millionaire escaped unhurt. Since then he has been forced by the Taliban rulers to stop giving interviews and making statements." - TCM Breaking News (09/11/01)

"As a result of sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region, Unocal, which serves as the development manager for the Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium, has suspended all activities involving the proposed pipeline project in Afghanistan. We are discussing this suspension with the other members of the consortium." - Unocal (08/21/98)

(See also: 1997 - Taleban in Texas for talks with Unocal on oil pipeline through Afghanistan; February 12, 1998 - Unocal rep testifies before congress that an Afghan pipeline can't happen without a single government there; December 4, 1998 - Unocal withdrawals from building a gas pipeline through Afghanistan)

Bin Laden comes home to roost, His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

"At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.

As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.

So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.

It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden’s connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein’s monster like this." - MSNBC (08/24/98)

"THE FULL REPORT - 9/11: The full 445-page report from Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to Congress." - PBS

• November, 1998 - Philip Zelikow, member of the National Security Council and future executive director of the 9/11 Commission, co-authors a book about terrorism in America that speculates that if the explosive device used in the '93 WTC bombings was a weapon of mass destruction, event would "divide our past and future into a before and after" in which the U.S. might respond with draconian measures like with the attack at Pearl Harbor.

Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger

"Summary: The specter of weapons of mass destruction being used against America looms larger today than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. The World Trade Center bombing scarcely hints at the enormity of the danger. America is prepared only for conventional terrorism, not a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons catastrophe. With the right approach and organization, however, the United States can be ready. Herewith a plan to reorganize the U.S. government to ensure that it can handle the threats of the next century.Ashton Carter is Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. John Deutch is Institute Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Philip Zelikow, a former member of the National Security Council staff, is White Burkett Miller Professor of History and Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

A successful attack with weapons of mass destruction could certainly take thousands, or tens of thousands, of lives. If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been nuclear, or had effectively dispersed a deadly pathogen, the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently." - Council on Foreign Relations/Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1998)

"Philip D. Zelikow is best known as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He also acted as the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia until February 2005 when he was appointed Counselor of the United States Department of State.

Zelikow practiced law in the early 1980s, but he turned toward the field of national security in the mid 1980s. He was adjunct professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California in 1984-1985, and served in three different offices of the U.S. Department of State in the second Reagan administration.Zelikow joined the National Security Council in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, at the same time as Condoleezza Rice.

Prof. Zelikow's area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, “public myths” or “public presumptions,” which he defines as “beliefs thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community."

Philip Zelikow served on President Bush's transition team in 2000-2001. After George W. Bush took office, Zelikow was named to a position on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and worked on other task forces and commissions as well, including the National Commission on Federal Election Reform.

In Rise of the Vulcans (Viking, 2004), James Mann reports that when Richard Haass, a senior aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell and the director of policy planning at the State Department, drafted for the administration an overview of America’s national security strategy following September 11, Dr. Rice, the national security advisor, "ordered that the document be completely rewritten. She thought the Bush administration needed something bolder, something that would represent a more dramatic break with the ideas of the past. Rice turned the writing over to her old colleague, University of Virginia Professor Philip Zelikow.” This document, issued on September 17, 2002, is generally recognized as a watershed document in the War on Terrorism.Because Philip Zelikow's significant involvement with the administration of George W. Bush, many have questioned the propriety of his position as executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which examined the conduct of George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Both the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and 9-11 Citizens Watch demanded his resignation, due to this apparent conflict of interest, without success." - Wikipedia

• December 4, 1998 - Unocal withdrawals from the Central Asia Gas consortium that was evaluating building a gas pipeline through Afghanistan.

"Effective December 4, 1998, Unocal has withdrawn from the Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium for business reasons. Unocal no longer has any role in supporting the development or funding of this project.Unocal had served as the development manager for the seven-member Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium, which was formed in October 1997 to evaluate and, if appropriate, to participate in the future construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to natural gas markets in Pakistan and, potentially, India. Contrary to some published reports, Unocal was not a party to any commercial agreement with any individual Afghanistan faction." - Unocal (12/04/98)

(See also: August 21, 1998 - Unocal suspends proposed pipeline through Afghanistan; 1999 - U.S. pays entire salary of every Taliban official to secure a stable government in Afghanistan)

• December 4, 1998 - Suzanne Jovin, a 21-year old political science major at Yale, is brutally stabbed 17 times four days before her senior thesis was due and the only suspect to ever be publicly accused and never had a confirmed alibi was her thesis advisor, professor James Van de Velde (who was Naval Intelligence, has high level top security clearance, worked for the 1st Bush administration, and went to work at the Pentagon after her murder), in which Suzanne chose her thesis subject in Van de Velde's area of expertise: Osama bin Laden.

Murder Most Yale: The Postscript

"Seven months after the vicious stabbing of Yale senior Suzanne Jovin, in a wealthy neighborhood near campus, in December 1998, the entire university knew that her thesis advisor, former dean James Van de Velde, was a suspect. More than seven years later, despite a number of developments in the case, Van de Velde has never been charged, but he has never been formally cleared of suspicion, either; furthermore, the police appear no closer to identifying Jovin's killer.

Suzanne Jovin, the police believe, was murdered by someone she knew.Jovin was last reported seen around 9:25 near Phelps Gate, the main entrance to Yale on College Street. At 9:58, someone called 911 to report that a woman lay bleeding on the corner of Edgehill and East Rock, nearly two miles away. How had Jovin traveled so far in approximately 30 minutes? The police think that she must have been driven there, and her friends are certain she would never have accepted a ride from a stranger. But whose car had she gotten into? Who could have killed her so brutally and left no clues? And why would anyone have wanted to kill Suzanne Jovin? Brainy, beautiful, and hugely popular, she was considered extraordinary, even among Yale's overachievers.

What no one was prepared for was the shocking news that one of Yale's own—James Van de Velde, Jovin's 38-year-old senior-essay adviser—was a suspect in her killing. Van de Velde was a brilliant and well-liked political-science lecturer, who had previously held positions at the Pentagon and the State Department.

Her parents, Thomas and Donna Jovin, are American scientists—molecular and cell biologists—who work there at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry.

"She was extremely serious academically, but also just a great person to have fun with and hang out with … She was very traditional and stylish and feminine, but then also very rebellious and liberal."

To begin with, friends insist that Jovin, who was five feet five inches and weighed 125 pounds, was physically quite strong. She jogged, played squash, skied, and sometimes took step-aerobics classes at Yale's Payne Whitney gym. Whoever killed her, her friends say, was very strong or, says one, "someone who knew what they were doing."

According to the police, there was no evidence of a sexual assault. The viciousness of the stabbing suggested that robbery had not been her murderer's motive. Police believed she was stabbed from behind at the spot where she was found. It appeared she had gotten out of a car, before or after having had an argument with a man. She did not appear to have called for help or to have put up a struggle.

Van de Velde majored in political science at Yale. He sang in the university's well-known Russian chorus his freshman year and twice traveled to Asia on internships. He was a serious student who graduated with honors. After Yale, Van de Velde went to Boston to Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, from which, in 1987, he received his Ph.D. in international-security studies. In 1988 he was selected for a prestigious Presidential Management Internship and was assigned to work at the Pentagon and at the State Department, where he stayed for four years, working on U.S.-Soviet disarmament issues.In 1988, Van de Velde also joined the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserves, in which he still holds the rank of lieutenant commander, with a "Top Secret" clearance. Trained in intelligence work, he was assigned to Singapore, Brussels, and Panama, where he analyzed the drug trade out of Latin America. In 1993, after Bill Clinton defeated George Bush, Van de Velde, who was a political appointee and a Republican, left the State Department. That fall he was back at Yale as the dean of Saybrook College.

"He had this aura about him because we'd heard that he worked for the C.I.A.," another woman recalls. "He said he'd studied handwriting analysis, and he would do it for us in the dining hall," says another.

Van de Velde took a leave of absence from the dean's job, early in 1997, to go to Italy on assignment for naval intelligence. He came back that April to complete the semester, and then left Yale to go to Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center as its executive director.

Jovin, friends say, began the semester like many students, enthralled with Van de Velde. Indeed, she was impressed enough that she decided to do her senior essay with him as her adviser—actually, she had taken the unusual step of writing two senior essays, the other in international studies. She chose a subject in Van de Velde's area of expertise: the international terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is believed to have masterminded the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

At some point in the semester, however, Jovin's enthusiasm seemed to falter. She didn't go on either of the two field trips. "She thought they were a waste of her time," says a friend of hers. She also had reservations about a project on terrorism. The project, which was optional but which the class had voted to pursue, involved using the Internet to show how easy it would be for a terrorist to get information to create a weapon of mass destruction. "We decided to plan to use chemicals in a plane that we'd fly over the Super Bowl in Miami," says one student. "We figured everything out except how much water to put in the chemical to make it fall from the plane—no one would give us the proportions for that." According to Jovin's parents, the chemical in question was the warfare agent sarin. "Suzanne expressed to a fellow student that we, her parents, might have that information," the Jovins say, "but that we would be opposed to the project on moral and ethical grounds and that she therefore would not proceed further." Faced with students' objections, Van de Velde stopped the project. He does not recall any complaints from Jovin.

If the police found no evidence of a romance, they did, however, learn something else. By November, it appears, the professional relationship between Van de Velde and Jovin had broken down almost completely. Although Van de Velde had written her a glowing recommendation for graduate school in late October, Jovin began to feel that he had no time for her. According to a friend of Jovin's, she had tried repeatedly to meet with Van de Velde about her senior essay and had felt that she was rebuffed. In the weeks before she died, says this friend, "she complained bitterly about a bunch of things in that class, and especially his lack of support for her project. He had shown no interest in her work." For a college-thesis adviser basically to check out on a student trying to get feedback on her senior essay would be unusual in any case. But for Van de Velde—a devoted teacher noted for his availability, who would take his students to lunch to help them with their work, and who answered their E-mails within minutes—it would have been downright bizarre. During November, it appears that Jovin was trying to pin down a time to meet with Van de Velde. "They never did get together [then]," says Ira Grudberg. "They couldn't get the dates right and so forth."

By Thanksgiving, Jovin had become upset; her essay was due on December 8. "Suzanne indicated to us during the Thanksgiving break—we were together in California—how deeply she resented the lack of mentoring by this senior thesis advisor," her parents recall. Although Van de Velde denies having received it, Jovin's parents say she had handed in a draft on November 17. She left a second draft with Van de Velde right before the Thanksgiving holiday. Jovin told friends that Van de Velde canceled a meeting on Monday, November 30, because he hadn't read the paper yet, although he says no meeting was scheduled. At a meeting the next day, December 1, he still hadn't read it. "He'd gotten tied up over Thanksgiving and hadn't done it," says Ira Grudberg. "He was very apologetic, and he could see she was upset. That very day and night he made a lengthy review of it and met again with her on December 2, at which time he discussed it with her. She was much, much happier."

According to her parents and a close friend, however, Jovin was far from happy after that meeting. "The last time I talked to Suzanne was … on that evening, very late in the evening," the friend says. "She was still furious … and she was very insecure about what would happen."

Sometime on the afternoon of December 4—Van de Velde believes it was either between 4 and 4:30, or around 1—Jovin stopped by Van de Velde's office on Prospect Street to drop off a new draft. She attached a cordial, handwritten note outlining her changes and thanking him.

Van de Velde spent most of the evening of Friday, December 4, at his office, Ira Grudberg says. A friend, who stopped by around six p.m. to ask him to go to a movie, says he was planning to work all evening. According to Grudberg, Van de Velde went over Jovin's revisions that evening and was going to give her his comments the following morning. He took a short break at one point and walked up the street to Ingalls Rink, to watch part of the hockey game, then returned to his office, and then went home, which is where he was, alone, says Grudberg, at the time of the killing.

The woman who had seen Jovin walking on College Street at around 9:25 on the night of the stabbing saw Van de Velde on television and started shaking. "I got chills," she says. "I didn't know Van de Velde. I go home and turn on the news and I see him. This guy, talking to reporters, he was blond, with glasses. I could not believe what I saw. I went back to my notes and saw the description I wrote, that I saw a blond man with glasses." The man she claims she saw walking behind Jovin near Phelps Gate the night of the murder so closely resembled Van de Velde's image on television that she believes it was he." - Vanity Fair (01/00/06) [Wayback]

An interview with Suzanne Jovin's father

"YH: Do you have any idea why she would have been by herself at nighttime, 1.5 miles away from campus? Do you know what kinds of things she was occupied with the week before her tragic murder?TJ: During the week of December 4 she was very concerned about the progress and evaluation of her senior thesis," - Yale Herald (04/23/99)

Van de Velde denies involvement in Jovin murder in '20/20' interview

"But the ABC News show "20/20" will report Wednesday that the alibis of 20 other suspects have so far checked out. Citing sources close to the investigation who it did not identify, "20/20" reports that only the former lecturer, James Van de Velde, does not have a confirmed alibi.

Van de Velde said he was home watching a taped episode of "Friends" and the Discovery Channel at the time police believe Jovin was killed. The 21-year-old political science major from Goettingen, Germany, was stabbed 17 times on the night of Dec. 4, 1998.

"I can't believe you're doing this!" Jovin said, according to a passerby who heard the words minutes before Jovin's body was found.A few minutes earlier, at about 9:45 p.m., a neighbor had heard a man and woman arguing. Five minutes later, another neighbor said she heard a woman scream five times.Van de Velde, 39, was Jovin's senior thesis adviser. He flatly rejects what "20/20" said is a police theory _ that he killed Jovin after she rejected his romantic advances.

Van de Velde also denied reports that he had harassed three local television reporters and developed a reputation as a stalker of women.And he said he was unaware that Jovin told family and friends in the week before her murder that she was angry with him because she felt he was not giving her enough feedback on her senior thesis." - WTNH News 8 (02/29/00) [Watch video: youtube]

Van de Velde tells "20/20" he did not kill Suzanne Jovin

" But more than a year later, Van de Velde is still the only suspect named publicly by the police. In an exclusive "20/20" interview, Van de Velde continues to deny his link to the murder of his beautiful and brilliant student.

Just recently, the Jovins made a public appeal for Van de Velde to take a lie detector test. He did. But not with police.Miller: "The chief said on the record that he wished you would come in and take a polygraph exam from the police."Van de Velde: "Well, I've already fulfilled their request. In November, I took a polygraph with an FBI polygrapher, a 30-year veteran of the FBI. I passed."Miller: Actually, Jim Van de Velde has taken three polygraphs..all conducted by private examiners, paid for by Van de Velde. The examiner on the first two tests said the results were inconclusive because, he said, Van de Velde was "too emotional". On the third polygraph Van de Velde took and passed, he was tested on whether a declaration he signed denying the murder was true. He was not directly asked whether he killed Suzanne Jovin.Miller: "And if the police asked you to come in and take a polygraph by their examiner?"James Van de Velde: "Absolutely not.

Criminal justice Professor James Adcock has been a criminal investigator for the army for 20 years. He's relied on polygraph tests in dozens of cases. But he has some questions about this one.James Adcock: "Obviously he's not being asked whether he was there...whether he saw her that evening or was with her that evening and is not being asked if in fact he killed her, which are direct questions that as an investigator I would want covered."Christina: "Would it mean anything to you that he took a polygraph test and passed?"Adcock: "No, not unless I'm able to validate it through another examiner." - WTNH News 8 (02/29/00) [Watch video: youtube]

God and white, Republican man at Yale

"James Van de Velde knows this well. He's the citizen whose life has been most bludgeoned by Yale.

A cum laude Yale graduate and rising star in the first Bush administration during his 20s, Van de Velde reached stratospheric heights as both a Naval intelligence officer (lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve) and State Department operative and arms negotiator. In addition to his doctorate in international security studies from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Van de Velde held (and still has) a security clearance five levels above top secret.Then, he became a rising star at Yale – a lecturer and likely the only Republican in its left-leaning political science department and a dean. A handsome, popular professor, Van de Velde's courses, like "International Drug Trafficking: National Security Dimensions and Drug Control Strategies," were cited by Spin Magazine as among the coolest in American collegiate life, and he got rave reviews from students. He'd also begun a promising career as a television commentator on national security issues.

With Yale insisting upon mentioning the murder in any job reference the school gave him, Van de Velde was unable to find a job subsequently.

Van de Velde finally got a job, with the Pentagon's Defense Declassification Referral Center, where his high security clearance was reviewed and renewed. A real murderer doesn't get such a top-secret job or the clearance that goes with it – the result of an excruciating FBI background check." - WorldNetDaily (07/20/01)

A Suspect in Yale Murder With Top Pentagon Clearance

"Mr. Van de Velde, 41, may be the only murder suspect working in the highest, strictly classified realm of the Defense Department, which trusts him enough to have issued him a security clearance several levels above top secret.Back in New Haven, it is still not difficult to find people willing to voice an opinion of Mr. Van de Velde, an ultra-preppy, by-the-numbers former Navy intelligence officer, even though they have never met him.

He was a single man who had pursued, without much success, relationships with two local television reporters. And he had no incontrovertible alibi: he was home alone, he told detectives, at 9 p.m., around the time of the killing.

Before he was hired in December 1999 by the Defense Declassification Referral Center at the Pentagon, where he reviews military documents and diplomatic cables eligible for declassification, he had to pass a rigorous background check.

Nowadays he lives alone in an Arlington apartment tower; he would not say whether he was dating anyone, though he recently went on a European vacation with a companion." - NY Times (06/19/01)

Yale faculty blind to U.S. security demands

James Van de Velde

"As at least part of the current Yale community may remember well, the Yale faculty and the parents of slain Yale student Suzanne Jovin '99 excoriated me for challenging my 1998 political science class to consider how terrorists might attempt to inflict massive damage on U.S. citizens and infrastructure. This was just a few months before the first such terrorists were, in fact, to arrive in the United States to plan their operation.

The optional class exercise was designed to expose Yale students to the realities of the world I knew well, particularly how information technology had made weapons technology available to anyone with a personal computer. The class devised a chemical weapons attack using a crop duster, a scenario we know today was considered by those who perpetrated the World Trade Center attack.Jovin committed to the study of international affairs to change the world for the better, and she chose to write a thoughtful and farsighted senior essay in 1998 on Osama bin Laden. She noted with alarm his "fatwah" to murder Americans everywhere -- not just soldiers abroad. She briefed her senior essay in a class presentation to a mortified group of Yale undergraduates in November 1998. It is profoundly sad that she is dead."

James R. Van de Velde '82 is a former Lecturer in the Political Science department and a former Dean of Saybrook College. - Yale Daily News (10/22/01)

Suzanne Jovin must not be forgotten

"No arrests have been made in the case, and the only named suspect, former Yale professor James Van de Velde, has moved on to a new city and a new job.

By all accounts the trail has gone cold. More irritating still, the state and the New Haven Police Department have managed to successfully fend off attempts by journalists and private citizens to access the fruits of the investigation through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The murder was almost immediately identified as a crime of passion—Jovin was stabbed 17 times in the neck, back, and head, leading many to assume that deep-seated feelings motivated the attack. Money was discovered in one of her pockets, and her earrings and watch had not been taken, suggesting robbery was an unlikely motive. Based on those conclusions, speculation raged that Van de Velde, who was her thesis advisor, had murdered her because she had spurned him as a lover. And while no evidence ever emerged to justify such a theory, it nevertheless managed to ruin the former professor's life and academic career. Meanwhile, Jovin's thesis was on international terrorism, with a specific focus on a Saudi citizen by the name of Osama bin Laden. Even then, some thought that the subject matter might have gotten her killed by sparking the interest of those who sought to protect the terrorist and his work.

The temptation to play armchair detective is all the more intense because of the strong signs that the New Haven Police Department botched the investigation; the lead detective on the case was later tried on charges of mishandling and hiding evidence related to a separate case." - Yale Herald (12/06/02)

After years of injustice, it is time to take actionJames R. Van de Velde

"Over four years ago now, on Dec. 4, 1998, a talented and intelligent student I taught and advised, Suzanne Jovin, was brutally murdered in New Haven. Her killer has yet to be found.

I hold a Top Secret clearance from the Department of Defense, which conducted its own review of the investigation and never pulled my security clearance. Yale's private investigators, hired to develop leads in the case, met with me three times for a total of six hours and requested and received a DNA sample, which did not match the DNA accrued from underneath the fingernails of Jovin. I passed three separate polygraphs with a nationally renowned former FBI polygrapher and FBI Academy instructor. The New Haven Police never asked to see me again or forwarded any questions for me whatsoever after their Dec. 8, 1998 interview.The outrageous insinuation that I had anything to do with this crime is criminal, cruel and irresponsible." - Yale Daily News (04/22/03)

The Unusual Suspect

"From October until January, Van de Velde '82, a former lecturer in the Department of Political Science and dean of Saybrook College, spent his time interrogating al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."Guys blindfolded and in handcuffs. Great place," friend and political science professor David Cameron said with a note of disapproval.He was there because he is an al Qaeda expert. Because, Cameron said, he can do what the military cannot do well: break down suspects until they reveal their closely guarded secrets.But Van de Velde was mainly in Cuba because, despite his academic brilliance and intimate knowledge of the intelligence community and the military, no college would let him anywhere near its students.

Van de Velde said he spent the night of Dec. 4 at home, watching "Friends" and channel surfing. A little after midnight, Van de Velde said, he received an e-mail from a student, telling him Jovin had been killed.In the early days of the investigation, city and University police scoured campus and East Rock for clues. Eventually, their investigation led them to Van de Velde, who was advising Jovin on her senior thesis on al Qaeda.

"He gave a television interview that Saturday where he spoke about her -- The police heard from various sources that she was unhappy with him because he hadn't read her draft of the senior essay over the Thanksgiving break and didn't get it back to her until that Wednesday," Cameron said. "That would be enough for any good cop to at least want to talk to him and ask him some questions."

From Harvard, Van de Velde went into government, first as an expert on nuclear weapons arms control for the State Department and later as an appointee of President George Bush. When Bush lost the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992, Van de Velde lost his job and returned to Yale.

According to police, Stein last saw Jovin walking near Old Campus. Since she was killed about two miles away only 20 minutes later, police have speculated that Jovin most likely was driven to where she was found, and that Jovin would only have gotten into a car with someone she knew.But Van de Velde has said he believes it is extremely unlikely that Jovin knew her killer, since Jovin was walking at a random time and few members of the Yale community use a car to get around campus. Instead, he posits she was abducted by several people in an attempted robbery near Broadway, driven to East Rock and killed." - Yale Daily News (02/05/04)

Tips Hotline - Case 1: Suzanne Jovin Murder Investigation

"We urge anyone with information - anyone who saw Suzanne between Phelps Gate and East Rock Road, or who knows anything about the tan or brown van, or who can add anything else about the case --- call the New Haven Police Department at 1-866-888-TIPS. If you have any information that may be helpful, don't hesitate, please call police. We believe that there are other citizens, who have not talked to police, and may have information that can assist us in this investigation. You can earn a reward of $150,000. All calls will be kept confidential." - New Haven Police Dept

• 1999 - A Federal Report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government buildings.

'99 Report Warned Of Suicide Hijacking

"Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building."Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al Qaeda might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

The report contrasts with Bush administration officials' assertions that none in government had imagined an attack like Sept. 11 before that time."I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday." - CBS (05/17/02)

• 1999 - NORAD starts conducting exercises in which airplanes are hijacked and crashed into targets which include the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

"In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises."Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.President Bush said at a news conference Tuesday, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons."Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission. No exercise matched the specific events of Sept. 11, NORAD said." - USA Today (4/18/04)

(See also: 1996 - U.S. officials considered possibility a plane could be flown into the main stadium at Olympics in Atlanta; 1998-99 - Federal Report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government buildings; April 2001 - NORAD planned an exercise about a hijacked plane crash into the Pentagon, but was rejected)

• 1999 - The mainstream media starts reporting that one of the teenage Columbine gunmen, Eric Harris, had written in his diary about a plot to hijack a plane and crash it into New York City.

"One of the two teen-age gunmen who killed 12 other students and a teacher before killing themselves in a 1999 attack on Columbine High School described their plan in detail in his journals, and said that if they could not get out of the country after the attack, they would hijack a plane and crash it into New York City.Eric Harris, 18, outlined his plans a year before he and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold carried out the April 1999 attack. The entries quoted are here verbatim, including numerous misspellings, although obscenities have been edited."If by some wierd as s--t luck my and V survive and escape we will move to some island somewhere or maybe mexico, new zelend or some exotic place where americans cant get us. if there isnt such a place, then we will hijack a hell of a lot of bombs and crash a plane into NYC with us inside iring away as we go down," Harris wrote." - CNN (12/06/01)

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that...they [the alleged 9/11 hijackers] would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice." - CBS (05/17/02)

• 1999 -The U.S. has paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official in hopes to secure a stable government in Afghanistan that will allow U.S. oil giant Unocal to build a pipeline through it to connect to the Caspian Sea.

"A few years ago, the giant country struck oil in the eastern portion of the Caspian Sea. Geologists estimate that sitting beneath the wind-blown steppes of Kazakstan are 50 billion barrels of oil -- by far the biggest untapped reserves in the world.Nazarbayev, therefore, has spent most of the past decade trying to get his landlocked oil out to sea. But the longer the pipeline, the more expensive and vulnerable it is to sabotage. The shortest route runs through Iran, but Kazakstan is too closely aligned with the United States to offend it by cutting a deal with Tehran.The logical alternative, then, is Unocal's plan, which is to extend Turkmenistan's existing system west to the Kazak field on the Caspian Sea and southeast to the Pakistani port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. That project runs through Afghanistan.The United States and Pakistan decided to install a stable regime in place in Afghanistan around 1994 -- a regime that would end the country's civil war and thus ensure the safety of the Unocal pipeline project. Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official, all in the hopes of returning to the days of dollar-a- gallon gas." - SFGate (11/02/01)

• February 1, 1999 - Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a voice morphing technology that can clone another person's voice by taking a few minute digital recording of someone's voice.

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.

Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.

Voice-morphing? Fake video? Holographic projection? They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons. Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands.Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks. Eliminated are the robotic intonations.

Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world. With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future." - Washington Post (02/01/99)

• April 26, 1999 - Former President and CIA director, George Bush Sr., gets the CIA's headquarters compound in Langley, Virginia named after him.

"The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999* was signed into law by the President on October 20, 1998. Among its provisions, the Act directed that the Headquarters compound of the Central Intelligence Agency located in Langley, Virginia, shall be known and designated as the "George Bush Center for Intelligence."Former President George Bush was Director of Central Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency from 30 January 1976 to 20 January 1977.On April 26, 1999, Agency employees, senior officials from current and previous Administrations and Congresses, former Directors and Deputy Directors of Central Intelligence, family members, and friends joined former President Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush in ceremonies dedicating the Headquarters compound as the George Bush Center for Intelligence." - CIA

"Mr. [Porter] GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3821) to designate the Headquarters Compound of the Central Intelligence Agency located in Langley, Virginia, as the George H.W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence." - FAS

• May 21, 1999 - Bush says "there ought to be limits to freedom" about the parody website www.gwbush.com.

"Www.gwbush.com is so outlandish that anyone would spot it as a parody site, he says.The Republican front-runner does not share Exley's sense of humor. He is taking legal action.When asked at a news conference in May what he thought about the site, Bush let loose, saying it was produced by a "garbage man" and suggesting that "there ought to be limits to freedom" -- a line Bush's online critics have vowed to never let the world forget.The Bush campaign also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Exley of violating election laws and demanding that he operate under the rules and regulations of a political committee. FEC officials said they could not comment on the complaint but acknowledged last week that they are reviewing it.Exley said Bush's intent is to intimidate and shut him down -- a charge the Bush campaign denies." - Washington Post (11/29/99)

• August 25, 1999 - The FBI final admits that potentially incendiary tear gas cartridges were used on the final day of the Branch Davidian compound siege, but claim these cartridges didn't cause the fire because they were used hours before the fire broke out.

"The FBI yesterday reversed a six-year-old position that it never used munitions capable of sparking the blaze that ended a standoff with the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Tex., and left 76 people dead.The acknowledgment that FBI agents fired "a very limited number" of potentially incendiary tear gas cartridges on the final day of the 51-day siege contradicts congressional testimony from high-ranking Justice Department officials, such as Attorney General Janet Reno, who said that the tear gas used against the Davidians "could not have caused a fire."An FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, said yesterday that none of its munitions started the fire on April 19, 1993, and noted that they were used hours before the inferno that consumed the Davidians' compound. FBI officials said they still believe that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his followers deliberately torched the compound but expressed regret if their answers to Congress ultimately may prove to be inaccurate." - Washington Post (08/26/99)

(See also: April 19, 1993 - The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidians ranch ends when the compound is completely destroyed by fire.)

• January 2000 - CIA information about two alleged 9/11 hijackers in San Diego is squelched before reaching the FBI.

Memo on 9/11 Plotters BlockedNew disclosures show that CIA information in 2000 about two Al Qaeda operatives in San Diego was squelched before reaching the FBI."A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged Thursday, when the Justice Department disclosed that about 20 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a CIA official had blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI that two known Al Qaeda operatives had entered the country.The two men were among the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.If the FBI had received the official communique from the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit when it was ready for transmittal in January 2000, its agents likely could have tracked down the men, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with a newly declassified report of the Justice Department's inspector general.Officials involved in the case of alleged would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had attempted to block release of the report, asserting that it would compromise the outcome of his case. But Inspector General Glenn A. Fine went to court and won release of the report after deleting the section on Moussaoui.An 18-month delay in the CIA's handing over of information about the two hijackers to the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies had been well-publicized. But the report's conclusion that an agent had written a memo specifically designed for transmittal to the FBI to alert the bureau to the men's presence — and that a supervisor deliberately had prevented it from being sent — is new.The reason the CIA official, identified by the fictitious name "John," put a hold on the communique remains a mystery, the report said. It said the officials involved didn't recall the incident. Even when the author of the memo followed up a week later with an e-mail asking if it had been sent to the FBI, nothing was done.Records show that the CIA didn't forward the information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi to domestic law enforcement officials until late August 2001, when it asked that the men be put on watch lists." - LA Times (06/10/05) [Reprinted at: informationclearinghouse.info]

"CNN employed active duty U.S. Army psychological operations personnel last year, WorldNetDaily has confirmed through several sources at Fort Bragg and elsewhere.Maj. Thomas Collins, U.S. Information Service has confirmed that "psyops" (psychological operations) personnel, soldiers and officers, have worked in the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The lend/lease exercise was part of an Army program called "Training With Industry." According to Collins, the soldiers and officers, "... worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news."

The CNN military personnel were members of the Airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread 'selected information.' Critics say that means dissemination of propaganda.

(See also: February 1, 1999 - Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a voice morphing technology)

• March 20, 2000 - Filming begins on the The Lone Gunmen's 'Pilot' episode, which depicts a U.S. government conspiracy plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into the WTC and blame it on foreign terrorists in order to provoke war and increase the military's budget.

"On March 4, 2001, during Season 8 of “The X-Files,” the three spun off in a seriocomic series of their own, created by “X” producers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban, and co-starring Zuleikha Robinson (“Hidalgo”) and Stephen Snedden (“Coyote Ugly”).Despite the concern of some fans, the pilot of “The Lone Gunmen” is indeed part of the boxed set. This would seem like a no-brainer — until you realize that the central conspiracy in the episode involved the high-tech electronic hijacking of a commercial airliner with the intent of crashing it into the World Trade Center.Although the episode was conceived and shot in 2000 and aired six months before the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the eerie coincidence sent shockwaves through cast and producers.“I'll never forget that,” says Spotnitz, calling in from the set of the pilot for his remake of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” “That was such a disturbing thing. It was very upsetting. As I say in the DVD featurette, you write something like that, and you assume that if you can think of it, being a Hollywood writer, then somebody in the government has thought about it already." - Kansas City Star (03/21/05)

"Events further unravel to reveal that a secret government agency known as "The Overlords" is behind a plot to crash a fully loaded [727] into the World Trade Building. The Overlords plan to blame the crash on terrorists in an attempt to generate a bigger budget for military spending (of course)." - Wizard's Keep

"Should pilots or a computer have the ultimate control authority over a commercial jetliner as the plane approaches its design limits in an emergency?Airline passengers can't see it, but this is the most significant difference between Boeing and Airbus planes.Dramatic advancements in technology have made it possible for planes built by either manufacturer to be flown by computers from shortly after takeoff through the landing.But Airbus has taken a much different philosophical approach to using computers than its rival. The European airplane maker designed its new fly-by-wire jets such as the A320 with built-in hard limits, or "protections."The Boeing Co., on the other hand, believes pilots should have the ultimate say. On Boeing jets, the pilot can override onboard computers and their built-in soft limits.On all Airbus planes other than the older A300 and A310, computers prevent the pilot from putting the plane into a climb of more than 30 degrees where it might lose lift and stall. The maximum bank or roll allowed is 67 degrees. The plane's nose-down pitch is limited to 15 degrees. There are protections against overspeed.And the computer won't allow the plane to make any extreme maneuvers that would exceed 2.5 times the force of gravity.Though fly-by-wire was used on jet fighters and on the supersonic Concorde, the first Airbus plane with the technology was the A320, which entered service in 1988.Fly by wire simply means that computers on the plane transmit the pilot inputs into electrical signals that are sent through wires to actuators that move the control surfaces.On conventional planes, the flight-control surfaces are moved by hydraulic devices controlled by cables that run through the airplane.Airbus also eliminated the wheel-and-control column, or yoke, that is used on all Boeing jets. Instead, Airbus pilots control the plane by moving a small, hand-held joystick off to the side.The only Boeing plane with fly-by-wire technology is the 777." - Seattle Post-Intelligencer (03/20/00)

• June 2000 - On the cover of the U.S. Department of Justice/National Sheriffs’ Association's Managing Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents: An Executive Level Program for Sheriffs participant manual, which is funded by the Office of Homeland Security, is a picture of the WTC with a gun scope's cross-hairs aimed at one of the towers.

"NSA through funding from the Office of Homeland Security, Office for Domestic preparedness, is conducting “Executive Level Training”, a 12-hour block of instruction which is open to the Sheriff and his Command Staff. These classes will provide a broad overview of the terrorist threat and address response strategies and safety." - National Sheriffs’ Association

• July 2000 - Taliban bans the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been accused of being the main source of instability in Central Asia by experts attending an international conference on drugs and security in the region.In July, the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar, issued an edict banning the cultivation of poppies." - BBC (10/19/00)

• September 2000 - Exactly one year before 9/11, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) advocates the build up of the U.S. military, but won't think it will happen unless the U.S. experiences a major catastrophic event such as a "new Pearl Harbor".

REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSESStrategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century

"To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs.Moreover, the Pentagon, constrained by limited budgets and pressing current missions, has seen funding for experimentation and transformation crowded out in recent years. Spending on military research and development has been reduced dramatically over the past decade.Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

"...in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."That event came on Sept. 11, 2001. By that time, Cheney was vice president, Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, and Wolfowitz his deputy at the Pentagon." - ABC (03/10/03) [Reprinted at: WayBack Machine]

"Like his father, Bush tries to keep a daily diary of his thoughts and observations. That night [9/11], he dictated: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." - Washington Post (01/27/02)

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to the attack 60 years ago that surprised the nation's intelligence apparatus and propelled the country into World War II." - The Post (09/11/01)

(See also: January 26, 1998 - PNAC sends President Clinton a letter recommending U.S. military action against Saddam Hussein; May 4, 2001 - Dov Zakheim is sworn in as Comptroller and CFO for the Department of Defense; June 27, 2001 - '02 defense budget request is a $37.8 billion or 11.5% increase over '01)

"Afghanistan has been accused of being the main source of instability in Central Asia by experts attending an international conference on drugs and security in the region.Speaking at the meeting, which is being held in Uzbekistan, the United Nations Under-Secretary General, Pino Arlacchi, said Afghanistan produced 75% of the world's opium.Mr Arlacchi - who is also the executive director of the UN's drug control agency - blamed Afghanistan for the mounting instability in central Asia.The foreign minister of Kazakhstan, Erlan Idrisov, said Afghan-trained militias were carrying out armed incursions to protect drug-trafficking routes and spread Islamic extremism through central Asia.Earlier this year, the UN threatened further sanctions against the ruling Taleban for, among other things, the continued production of opium.In July, the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar, issued an edict banning the cultivation of poppies.But a UN report published in September suggests that Afghanistan is still the biggest opium-producer in the world.The Taleban argue that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and farmers need international assistance to switch to other crops." - BBC (10/19/00)

(See also: 1999 - U.S. pays entire salary of every Taliban official to secure a stable government in Afghanistan; July 2000 - Taliban bans the cultivation of opium; November 7, 2000 - Pakistan seeks Central Asia gas via pipeline through Afghanistan)

• October 24, 2000 - The Pentagon conducts the first of two emergency training exercises called MASCAL which is about a mock plane crash of a passenger aircraft into the Pentagon less than a year before 9/11.

Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies "The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.On Oct. 24 [2000], there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.A major player in the exercise was the Arlington Fire Department.In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims." - Military District of Washington (11/03/00)

"No one ever imagined that a domestic plane would be used as a weapon to strike The Pentagon; but, fortuitously, because of its proximity to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, someone did imagine the accidental crash of a Boeing 757 airliner into the U.S. military’s headquarters. Last May, as part of their readiness training, the DiLorenzo clinic’s tri-service staff participated in a simulation exercise for this unlikely, but possible, event. They were well-prepared to help bring order to chaos after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack." - TRICARE, Military Health System

Excerpts from an interview with Major Lorie A. Brown, who was Chief Nurse of DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic."Having practiced over the past year our roles and worked our pieces, we knew our lanes of responsibility. I’m the chairperson for the DiLorenzo Action Response Team, DART; that is our MASCAL plan. For the past year, the DART team has been working on developing that plan, really creating a whole new plan. We sat down and met on numerous occasions with the Air Force clinic, civilian EMS, [Emergency Medical Services] Pentagon and DoD hierarchy, DPS and with the other civilian medical agencies. We worked through issues, what would happen in the event of a MASCAL, what each of our roles would be. We participated in several large tabletop exercises with these external bodies, to include FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the others I just mentioned. We even did our own internal exercise where we made up the scenario of a plane crashing into the building. Though you can never be prepared for an event like this, I am sure all our preparations and exercise paid off." - Office of Medical History, OTSG [HTML]

Excerpts from an interview with Lieutenant Colonel John Felicio, who was Deputy Commander for Administration of the DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic."I then went out to the front of the clinic, which is basically where we normally marshal in MASCAL situations.Meanwhile, I knew because of the two MASCAL exercises we previously did that Colonel Kaminski, our Chief of Ancillary Services, was responsible for being our Medical Liaison at the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) and that he should be en route to that location.The saving grace to our efforts was the two MASCAL exercises we previously had conducted with the clinic leadership and staff. You know it was kind of eerie. The scenario we had for these MASCALS was very similar to what actually happened. Our scenario for both MASCALS was a plane flying into the Pentagon courtyard." - Soldiers to the Rescue/Responding in the Pentagon [HTML]

(See also: September 10, 2001 - Pentagon medic Matt Rosenberg is on the phone with the FBI talking about who has command of the MASCAL plane crash plan if a plane hits the Pentagon; 9/11 - Walter Reed Army Medical Center personnel also say that it was "eerie" how an emergency situation they went through just two weeks before the attack helped prepare them for the Pentagon crash)

"Pakistan is pressing for the construction of a pipeline that will give it access to Central Asia's vast energy reserves.Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who is visiting the region, has met the leaders of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and urged them to consider the project.But the pipeline would have to pass through Afghanistan.The former Soviet republics that make up Central Asia have been wary of the Taleban rulers of Afghanistan and their growing influence in the region.Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar said the leaders discussed the 1,600 km gas pipeline project which is estimated to cost billions of dollars.He said the trans-Afghan route was the one preferred by the Pakistanis.Pakistan has been pressing the Central Asian republics to recognise that the Taleban are the dominant political force in Afghanistan."We have an interest in promoting peace and reconciliation in this country that can be a very important bridge between us," the foreign minister said.In the Kazakh capital, Astana, Kazakhstan's prime minister said major parties should refrain from interfering in the situation in Afghanistan and give the conflicting parties an opportunity to come to an agreement.Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev said he expected the Taleban to play a dominant role in a future Afghan government." - BBC (10/07/00)

• December 18, 2000 - Bush says it would be a lot easier if the U.S. was a dictatorship and he was the dictator.

"GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I told all four that there were going to be some times where we don't agree with each other. But that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." - CNN (12/18/00)

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